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Feb. 28, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:39
February 28, 2011, Monday, Hour #3
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That is absolutely right.
And for those of you tuning in, expecting to hear Rush today, Rush is recovering from a coal and he'll be in tomorrow.
But in the meantime, you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882.
And you know, this hour, I want to talk about some things that's kind of motivated by a politico piece, and it's titled A Defiant Clarence Thomas Fires Back.
Anyway, Clarence Thomas, he's been under attack since he's been Supreme Court justice.
Anyway, forget about the attack so much, but he was saying to a group of young people that he was addressing, and he says, you are all going to be the recipients of the fallout from the increasing disrespect for the Supreme Court,
and I might add the United States Constitution.
And he says, long after he's gone, it could be either for a short time or a long time, but you're younger, and it's still going to be a necessity to protect the liberties that you now enjoy in our country.
But I think that I would take a different cut on this.
A cut very similar to a colleague, a former colleague of Clarence Thomas, Judge Leonard Hahn.
And Judge Leonard Hahn said, Liberty, I'm quoting him, and I have wonderful quotes on my website.
It's walterewilliams.com.
And there's a handsome photo of me on my page.
And it says, liberty lies in the hearts of men and women.
When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.
No constitution, no court, no law can even do much to help it.
So what we have to do in our country is to restore the respect for the Constitution by the American people.
And if we respect the Constitution, I believe politicians will respect it.
And, you know, one of the things that's really been bothering me lately, and it really bothers me, and it's been coming up in the wake of the revolutions or the disruptions in first in Egypt, well, first in Tunisia, then Egypt, and now Libya.
And these things are being described, these Middle East starings are being described as democracy movements.
We also hear democracy as a description of our own political system.
Now, like the founders of our nation, I find democracy and majority rule a contemptible form of government.
You say, well, what do you mean?
Let me begin.
Let me just begin quoting our founders.
What did the founders of our great country have to say about democracy?
Well, let's try James Madison.
In Federalist Paper No. 10, Madison said, in a pure democracy, quote, there's nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual.
At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Virginia Governor Edmund Randolph said, quote, that in tracing these ills to their origin, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.
James Adams said, quote, remember, democracy never lasts long.
It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.
There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
Finally, and our founders, many of them said similar statements, but let me say one by, I'll give you one by Alexander Hamilton.
He said, quote, we are now forming a Republican form of government.
Real liberty is not found in the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.
If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy or some other form of dictatorship.
Now, so, ladies and gentlemen, the word democracy appears nowhere in the two most fundamental documents of our nation, namely the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.
And matter of fact, if you read the Constitution, which I'm going to make as an assignment, Article 4, Section 4 guarantees, quote, to every state in this union a Republican form of government.
Now, if you don't feel like reading our founding documents, just ask yourself about, you know, about our not being a democracy, or the founders not intending for us to be a democracy.
If you don't feel like reading those documents, just ask yourself, does our pledge of allegiance to the flag say to the democracy for which it stands, or to the republic for which it stands?
Or the Civil War song written by Julia Howe is called, the title of the song is The Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Should she have named it, or did she make a mistake?
Should it have been called the battle hymn of the democracy?
So, ladies and gentlemen, what is the difference between a Republican and Democratic form of government?
And I'm just going to spend a few more minutes talking about this.
John Adams captured the essence between a republic and the democratic forms of government.
He said, you have rights antecedent to every government, rights that cannot be repealed or retained, restrained by human laws, rights that come from the great legislator of the universe, God-given rights.
And a democracy is whatever a majority say, says the rules are.
In a democracy, the majority rules either directly or through elected representatives.
And if you don't believe me, if you cannot visualize how despicable the idea of democracy and majority rule is, just answer me this question.
How many decisions of your own life, in your own life, would you like to be handled through the democratic process or majority rule?
For example, how about the car that you drive?
How about where you live?
Whom you marry, or whether you have turkey or ham for Thanksgiving dinner.
I am sure if those decisions were made through a democratic process, the average person would see it as tyranny, not liberty, but tyranny.
And so ask yourself the question, is it no less tyranny for a democratic process determined whether you purchase health insurance or set aside money for retirement?
Think about that, and we'll be back.
Okay, we're back.
It's Walter Williams filling in for Rush, and you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882.
And Rush will be back tomorrow.
Let's go to the phone.
I was going to bring up, well, I'm going to bring up a story towards the end of the hour.
It's not very, very important, but it has to do with the benefits in India.
And I don't know whether many of you know about it, but the ladies in India are deciding that if you do not have a toilet in your home, you might not get a bride.
Is that our words?
I'm not going to marry you if you don't have a toilet.
But things are getting better in India.
60% of the homes, both in rural areas and urban areas, now have toilets, as opposed to, oh, just a few years ago, only 1% in rural areas.
But that's one of the great benefits of economic growth, of relaxing the government control over the economy, that India has had extensive government control over the economy.
But I'm getting off the subject, so let's go to the phones and talk to Terry from Locust Grove, Virginia.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you, Dr. Williams.
It's a pleasure.
I wanted to talk about the 17th Amendment changing the elections of the senators to popular vote from being selected by each state legislature.
And the reason that this disturbs me so much is that I think this upset the balance of power that the genius of the founders established by having the representatives represent the interests of the people, the individual citizens, and the senators representing the interests of the states and being responsible to the states.
And at this time now, I don't think any of the states have real representation in Washington, and they can do nothing about all of these unfunded mandates, for example.
You are absolutely right.
And not only the 17th Amendment weakened the power of the states relative to the federal government, but we're living with the outcome of the war between the states in 1861.
Sometimes people call it the Civil War.
And what happened was that the Civil War settled the issue of secession by just gross violence, that states could not secede.
And then once you establish that states cannot secede, then the federal government can do anything it wants to the states because exit is a very important tool to get people to respect you.
For example, if your husband was told that you cannot divorce him, well, then he can treat you any way he wants to because he has you stuck.
But however, the states are beginning to get some guts.
And they're getting guts in terms of doing something that the founders would have surely supported.
And that is the doctrine of state nullification.
That is, Thomas Jefferson in 1798, he outlined the notion that states have a right to void federal laws that are unconstitutional.
And so you say, okay, Williams, who decides what's unconstitutional?
Well, the founders said we should not give the Supreme Court a monopoly on what's constitutional because the Supreme Court is part of the, or the court system, the Supreme Court is part of the government system in Washington.
And so if you let the Supreme Court decide all the time what's constitutional, what's not constitutional, we're going to lose many of our rights.
And I support, I support states nullifying unconstitutional practices by the federal government.
And I think that there's an article in USA Today, and it's by John Adams.
He wrote it.
He said that states have already proven their ability to nullify federal law.
He points to 15 states that have openly defied federal drug laws by legalizing medical marijuana.
25 states that refused to implement the 2005 Real ID Act that is creating a national identification card.
And so I think that states should start asserting their power.
That is what the 17th Amendment did and the war between the states did, it virtually nullified the 9th and 10th amendments to the United States Constitution.
That is the 10th Amendment, for those of you who haven't read the Constitution, it says that all powers not delegated to the federal government belong to the people in the states.
And the Ninth Amendment says something similar.
That is just because it's not listed does not mean that you have that, does not mean that the government can take that right away from you.
Let's go to Scott in Walla Walla, Washington.
Welcome to the show, Scott.
Thank you.
It's a pleasure and a privilege, Dr. Williams.
Very educational program.
I have a question for you.
I've been traveling on the road, heard you ever since you started this morning.
And you made a comment.
I wanted clarification on politicians committing political suicide if they made some changes in some things that could take them out of office.
My concern was that we voted in November for a change and that we would hold those politicians accountable if they did not exercise fiscal policy and change some things.
And I just want to get some clarification if I didn't hear you incorrectly on that.
Well, no.
I said, I do not believe, I do not believe, I would like to be made shown that I'm absolutely wrong.
I don't believe that the politicians that we just elected to the House and the Senate are going to do those kind of cuts that are necessary to save our country.
For example, there's only one politician even proposing the kind of cuts that would save our country, and that's Rand Paul in the Senate, Rand Paul from Kentucky, and he's proposing $500 billion cut.
Now, that's still a drop in the bucket because the deficit is $1.8 or $1.6 trillion.
That's a third of this deficit.
But there's no way that the House and the Senate is going to cut $500 billion because it's going to be too much yapping from the American people.
And they don't want to get run out of town on the rail.
And as I said a little earlier, it's quite unreasonable for you and I to expect politicians to commit what they believe to be political suicide.
Scott Phil, still there?
No?
Yes.
Yes, I'm here.
I was listening.
So there's a real problem.
Now, a lot of people will say, well, what's going to happen?
What's going to happen to our great nation?
Well, I don't think American people should be that arrogant to think that we are that much different from other great nations of the past who have gone down the tubes.
I mean, the Roman Empire, the British Empire.
I mean, they were so rich they led the world.
Matter of fact, they used to say that the sun would never set on the British Empire.
It had so much influence.
But they went down the tube.
By the way, a friend of mine said the reason why the sun would never set on the British Empire is because God did not trust the British in the dark.
But that's a little different.
But other nations went down the tubes.
France, Spain, Portugal, Argentina.
Argentina was one of the top 10 richest nations.
And they went down the tubes for doing precisely what we're doing now.
That is huge bread and circuses.
And so what is different about American people?
I would hope, I would hope that we're unique.
But keep in mind that there's a characteristic of human beings, of the human condition.
And as for most of mankind's history, people have been subject to arbitrary abuse and control by government.
We represent, and other countries in the West were a tiny exception to that normal rule of thumb.
But I am all too afraid, and I won't be around to see it, unless I'm watching down from heaven, I'm all too afraid that a historian writing 150 years from now, maybe not that long, he'll say there was this little historical curiosity where people were free.
People had a measure of protection of private property rights.
But it all went back to the normal state of affairs of humankind.
And what is that normal state of affairs, even the most places in the world today?
It's arbitrary abuse and control by others, namely the government in most of these countries.
And our founders sought to prevent that by limiting government.
And what have we Americans done?
We told Congress, you can do anything upon which you can get a majority vote.
Okay, we're back.
And it's Walt Wayne sitting in for Rush.
And Rush will be back tomorrow.
And you can be with us by calling 800-282-2882.
And we're sitting here talking about the democracy.
Actually, I spent a lot of time talking about democracy versus liberty and what states should be doing.
And one of the big problems, folks, and we're going to get the phone before you guys have been waiting patiently in a few minutes.
But I believe that most Americans, and I believe politicians feel the same way, that Congress can do anything upon which it can get a majority vote.
Read the United States Constitution.
And you'll see all kinds of evidence that I was mentioning last time, last hour, that the founders hated the idea of majority rule.
I mean, why do you think we have the Electoral College that is, presidents are not elected by a majority rule?
Although a lot of people are pushing for the abolition of the Electoral College.
And what the founders said, look, if we have majority rule for president, highly populated states can run roughshod over states with small populations.
Or if you say, well, look, look at the presidential veto.
The president can veto the actions of 535 members of Congress.
Of course, they can overrule them, but it's not a simple majority.
And so what we Americans must do, we must read the Constitution.
And matter of fact, you know, a whole lot of politicians, the guys we elect to Washington, they don't know anything about the Constitution.
And I did a column, oh, I guess around October or September, and when constituents were asking politicians about something in the Constitution, and they just plain did not know.
They didn't plan.
So we Americans, see, the Constitution represents the rules of the game.
And, you know, some harebrained lawyer might tell you, or a constitutional scholar will say, well, yeah, that Williams guy, he's kind of narrow because the Constitution is a living document.
Well, anybody who says that the Constitution is a living document, they're also saying we don't have a Constitution.
Because for rules of the game to mean anything, they must be fixed.
They must be fixed.
Now, the framers of our Constitution gave us Article 5.
They said, well, gee, you know, we might have to change the rules of the game.
So they gave us Article 5 as a means to amend the Constitution.
And, you know, it's kind of interesting.
If you look at the 18th Amendment, that was the amendment outlawing the manufacture and sale of alcohol.
Well, people have been trying to get rid of that alcohol and alcohol sales in the United States for a long time.
But they said, heck, we don't have any authority.
So they had enough sense, enough respect to amend the United States Constitution.
And even kind of interesting, during the Eisenhower administration, we built the interstate highway system.
And there's nothing in the Constitution that authorizes the federal government to build interstate highways.
And so what was it called?
They showed a modicum of respect for the Constitution by naming it, I believe it's the National Defense Highway Act.
They say, well, national defense is in the Constitution, so we'll just call it for a national offense.
So, as I said, the statement by Judge Leonard Hand: when the Constitution dies in the heart of men and women, it's gone forever.
Because if you don't respect the Constitution, how are you going to expect a politician to respect the Constitution?
Yeah, or even the Supreme Court.
And if you read our Constitution, the Framers had gross distrust for the United States Congress.
Look at the language of the Bill of Rights.
It says, Congress shall not prohibit.
Congress shall not infringe.
Congress shall not disparage.
If the framers of our Constitution thought that Congress would not do these things, why in the world did they say it?
They had a deep suspicion of Congress, and here are you and I are just letting Congress run roughshod over our liberties.
The framers, if they were to come back today, I believe they would have contempt for most of us.
Let's go to Cameron in Hartford, Connecticut.
Welcome to the show, Cameron.
Good day, Doctor.
Always a pleasure.
Thank you.
You have said something very remarkable when you call out and blame the greatest generation for what has occurred to our country.
Most people think that is highly despicable, but it is so true.
And I've just recently, in recent years, had to discuss this with my parents.
As my father went down the path, we did discuss the reasons why that was true.
And this is a warrior, Battle of the Bulge, World War II survivor, and as great a man as ever walked the earth.
And for me to explain the blame on him for what has happened to our country, it was extremely difficult.
But you have established a high watermark in radio by bringing this up.
Now I sit with my mother three years later, having the same conversations.
And of course, those three years of difference make for a whole different picture.
I have to explain to her that a doctor in Philadelphia killed seven babies and one mother.
I have to explain to her that I have two women on the top of wedding cakes.
I have to explain to her other such abominable things that you can't imagine.
Well, you know, I think one of the things that you can say, or one of the things, you know, like when I talk about the great generation, if the great generation people, those Americans, if they were to ask their, or if they were to ask their mother and father or their grandmother, they say, well, Grandpa, what kind of relationship did you have with the federal government?
Well, maybe your grandfather would scratch his head and think.
And he'll say, well, I used to talk to the mailman.
That's all that they had.
There was no federal income tax.
They didn't have to tell everything About their lives to some remote agency.
There was not Social Security.
There was not this rule, that rule.
And, you know, another thing that people forget that I did not bring up because, heck, we just don't have enough time for it.
And that is another thing, another fault of the so-called greatest generation is that in trying to give their children, namely the baby boomers, to give their children what their parents could not give them, they wound up not giving their children what their parents did give them.
Things like self-respect, hard work, saving for a rainy day, and all of those great attributes, human attributes that made for us to be a great country.
That the greatest generation did not pass on to their children those values, at least in great numbers.
And this is why we face many of the problems that we face today.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
Okay, we're back.
And as Rush says, the fastest three hours of radio in history, you know, during the break, Kit Carson, who's screening the cause, he said something to me that said something to me or asked me a question that will allow me to promote myself a little bit.
He said, he said, Walter, are you part of the great generation?
So could it be your fault, part your fault?
Well, I don't know.
I'm on the tail end of the great.
I was born in 1936 during the Great Depression.
And so I guess maybe that puts me on the tail end of it.
So a little bit of my fault.
But I began to think, well, yes, it is a lot of my fault.
And there's a story, and the self-promotion part is my recent autobiography, Up From the Projects.
And in there, I tell a tale about when I was young, you know, 12 years old, and I was shining shoes, caddy in, and I made some money.
And one of the responsibilities for the money that I earned was to give a little bit towards the house and then take care of my school lunches, pay for my school lunches.
And at that time, you know, school lunch is like a quarter or 20 cents, something like this.
And I had developed a habit of being reckless with my money on the weekends, you know, spending it and partying.
And I developed a habit of coming to my mother Wednesday or Thursday, asking her to lend me some money for lunch, which she did, and I always paid her.
But one Wednesday or Thursday, whatever the case is, I asked her, and she said to me, Well, you know, you needed, you knew you needed school lunch money when you were spending your money on Sunday.
I could just see it coming.
And she said to me, I'm not going to lend you any money.
I thought that she was the meanest person on the face of this earth.
I didn't even speak to her.
And it must have been hard for her to see me come in, you know, I was 12, 13, 14, after school, starving and virtually inhaling the refrigerator.
But it must have been painful for her to see that.
But it's the last time it happened.
And what I did, so far as school money, when I got the money, I would put it in a jar by the bed on the dresser, and I would take out a certain amount each day.
Anyway, I was explaining this to Mrs. Williams, who's now departed for the last three years.
And she said she thought it was cruel and she could not do that.
And I said to her, I said, well, look, I didn't starve to death.
I was uncomfortable.
But she said, still, I thought it was mean.
I could not do that.
And I asked myself the same question.
I have a charming daughter, very good-looking daughter.
She looks just like her father.
And I asked myself the question: could I have done it?
Could I have seen my daughter come home starving?
And I am not quite sure I could not have done it.
So here's what I'm saying about the so-called great generation: is that they did not have the intestinal fortitude, or many of them, to do the kind of things that their parents did for them to make them responsible citizens,
to make it possible for them to be the generation who weathered the Great Depression, who saved us from the world's meanest tyrants, and who helped create the most prosperous nation on the face of this earth.
They did that, but I don't think that they did everything that their parents would have wanted them to do in terms of bequeathing their values to the next generation.
Let's go to Pamela in El Cajon, California.
Welcome to the show, Pamela.
Thank you.
I have learned so much from you this morning.
Well, that's our job here.
Our job is to push back the frontiers of ignorance.
Yeah, and here I am.
Well, I was born in 1927.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
Oh, you surely don't sound like you're born in 1927.
Well, I have a young voice.
Okay.
But anyway, anyway, I told the screener, I said, you know, in this last year, I realized that I'd lived so long that I've learned that everything I learned was wrong.
No.
We're up against the clock, but quickly say why.
Well, my father was a Democrat, belonged to the Democratic Party.
We always talked politics.
I just said I was a Democrat, and I assumed everything they ever said was correct.
I thought FDR was the greatest man on earth.
And fact is, you know, he was, when I was a teenager, I didn't know any other president but President Roosevelt.
Well, look, Pamela, President Roosevelt would have been a great Democrat compared to today's.
I mean, we had some really good Democrats.
Scoop Jackson, he was an excellent guy in the Democratic Party.
The Democrat Party just went down the tubes, I guess, sometime during the Johnson administration or shortly therefore, shortly before.
They left us.
They just left us.
Left.
That's right.
And Pamela, we should leave them.
And thanks for calling it.
And we'll be back with your call after this.
We're back, and let's take our last call.
And you have the distinction, Kevin, from Orlando, Florida.
Welcome to the show, Kevin.
Hi, Dr. Williams.
Could you discuss real quick the negative income tax theory proposed by Milton Friedman?
And it's just too cruel to actually go all the way through with it.
Well, Milton Friedman, my very esteemed colleague, and who's now departed, a Nobel laureate, one of the greatest economists of the 20th century, he said, look, Instead of having all this money spent and all these programs for poor people, just give them cash.
And he called it a negative income tax.
And the negative income tax would mean that, well, let's say we think that a family of four should have $20,000 a year.
That's just a hypothetical figure.
And let's say they only make $10,000 a year.
Well, send them $10,000 cash to make it so that they have $20,000.
Well, Milton Friedman's negative income tax didn't go very, very far because it means that there would be an end to the poverty industry.
That is, there are many people who make a very, very good income taking care of the poor.
But then again, Milton Friedman's negative income tax idea, it does not address the moral issue.
That is, the moral issue is why should one person be able to live at the expense of another?
But if you're going to have a welfare system, it should be a negative income tax.
Look, folks, it's been great talking to you.
And Rush will be here tomorrow to continue to push back the frontiers of ignorance.
And for right now, the way to get at some of the frontiers of ignorance and push them back is just check out walterewilliams.com.
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