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May 25, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:00
May 25, 2011, Wednesday, Hour #3
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I know, I know it's time to go here.
I just got a bunch of stuff going on.
Show prep never stops.
Great to have you.
Rush Limbaugh the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
The Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, our telephone number if you want to be on the program and our exciting big hour remaining, 800 282882, and the email address is El Rushbo FEIBNet.com.
Peter Thiel, one of the uh co-founders of PayPal.
He's also a um big wig in a uh a gay activist group, GOP Proud, gay Republicans.
I have met Peter Thiel.
I have met Peter Thiel, the home of Ann Colder.
He is a smart guy.
I um had a conversation with him one night at Conrad Black Peter Thiel, and we're discussing uh China economics and so forth.
That's just who he is.
Co-founder of uh of PayPal.
You might have seen him mention if you saw the movie Social Network, he was mentioned the latter half of the movie when they're setting up Facebook.
This story is from the San Francisco Chronicle.
I think it's San Francisco Chronicle.
Pretty sure it is.
In a move meant to provoke thought about the value of higher education.
Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, is giving 24 students money not to attend college for two years, but instead develop their own ideas.
And the winners were announced today for a new fellowship that has sparked heated debate in academic circles for questioning the value of higher education, suggesting that some entrepreneurial students may be better off leaving college.
Peter Thiel will pay each of the 24 winners of his Thiel Fellowship a hundred thousand dollars not to go to college for two years.
The winners here, 20 years old or younger, will leave institutions where they're currently enrolled, places like Harvard, MIT, and Stanford.
They will work with a network of more than a hundred Silicon Valley mentors and further develop their ideas in areas such as biotech, education, and energy.
More than 400 people applied for the fellowship.
Forty-five of them were flown out to San Francisco in late March.
I think essentially here, a scholarship not to go to college.
Well, you you don't like this, Don?
You're shaking your head in there.
This I know is a touchy subject for a lot of people.
As many of you may know and remember, I did not go to college.
I came very close to flunking out because I got an F in speech class twice, if you can believe it.
I went to every class I gave every speech.
I just didn't outline them according to the instructions we were given, so I got an F for insolence and insubordination.
And I always said, well, you should call the class Outline 101, not speech 101.
And then there was ballroom dance.
I mean, I've told this story over and over again.
I said, This is not fair, but I knew what I wanted to do.
I knew when I was eight uh what I wanted to do.
And I started working, my first job was shining shoes in the barbershop and I was 13.
I knew what I wanted to always work.
I I worked uh started radio when I was 16, and every you know, day and summer vacation, I'm getting up at four or five o'clock in the morning to go to work at the radio station.
Uh I just you couldn't keep me out of there.
I just I just loved it.
From the time I discovered that, and when I first started working at radio station, everything else to me was a problem.
Everything else was an obstacle.
It was not helpful.
It was none, and it led to great uh problem with my father.
My father, mother came from the Great Depression.
That was the formative experience in their lives.
And given that, they knew their belief was and what they inculcated to me and my brother, who did go to college, is a lawyer and a talent agent and an author and a columnist.
They told us you're you're you're you have no prayer of making anything of yourself if you don't go to college.
And of course, I'm typical.
I didn't rebel against my parents in the typical ways that kids rebel.
I didn't think they were full of it and try to burn down the house or but I did rebel in telling them that your values are not mine.
I I know what I want to do.
I was so impatient to get started doing it.
And I remember when I got my first job out of out of town, which is Pittsburgh in 1971.
Something hit me when I left home and I got this.
Okay, you know what?
I've realized I'm gonna have to be able to demonstrate what I know.
I because I don't have a diploma that says I'm educated, and I'm never gonna have one, because I I could not stand the classroom.
Just could not stay, I hated it.
It was like prison.
But that value of my father's is an American dream value.
Go to college.
You don't stand a chance.
It still hasn't changed much.
And as you know, there are anecdotal examples of people who dropped out.
They're very famous, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, any number of people who've, you know, entrepreneurs who, and then the Zuckerberg guy dropped out of Harvard to devote full-time to Facebook.
And you can't take anecdotes like that and say, well, that's good for everybody.
But with the cost of a college education these days, I am I'm seeing more and more people are, parents, more and more people are asking themselves, is it ultimately worth it?
Is there value here in it?
In the sense that, okay, you go to junior high, high school, you graduate, and then it's just automatic, next stop college.
Gotta go there.
You've got to park yourself there.
You got to ostensibly get an education, uh, set yourself up for your work life later on, but the economy being what it is, student loans being what they are.
Are you ever going to earn enough money to totally retire the student loan debt?
In other words, is there have we reached a point here where a genuine higher education costs so much that it's just not worth it?
You won't get it back.
More and more people start to ask this question.
But it is one of these axioms that's part of the American dream.
Got to go to college.
Now, of course, I don't believe it, because I didn't do it.
And I've never been a conformist anyway.
I find out what conventional wisdom is, and I automatically go the opposite way.
Just personality, characteristic for me.
And I don't believe that there is a formulaic way for everybody, or a route for everybody to follow that guarantees anything.
Now, I'm not opposed, obviously, to education.
Uh I don't have a formal education, but I don't think there can be any doubt here that I'm educated.
But not formally, and I don't have any proof of it in terms of uh of a diploma.
What do you mean it gives me an edge?
Oh, well, that's sturdley saying I don't think like anybody else.
Well, that's part of being the conformity.
College does turn out cookie cutters for a while.
It does take you a while to find yourself once you get, particularly if you don't know what you want to do even after you graduate and get out.
But I I look at what Theel's doing here, and I find it fascinating.
There's a there's a There's a great phrase in this article describing many who attend college.
The phrase is it was just this default activity.
And it is.
It is the next step in the stage of life.
It's just that you automatically do it.
You go to college.
You start taking your SATs, your LSATs, whatever entrance exams there are, you go through the process of applying, you want to go to the finest school that will accept you and all of this.
It's a right of passage.
But it is a default activity.
It's something most people do simply because it's the next thing they should do.
And what Peter Thiel is saying here is, you know, college isn't for everybody.
I'm going to give you a 100,000 scholarship to find out if it's not for you.
Give you 100 grand.
We'll mentor you.
You got some ideas.
You have to apply for this.
I mean, you don't, it's just not randomly, people aren't randomly selected.
You have to demonstrate that you have some entrepreneurial capability and that you have some idea that is effervescing.
You apply and they choose you, and then they put you with a mentor for two years and see what happens.
I I like it.
I think there are a lot of people in college that have no business being there.
Simply there simply because that's the next place to go.
A lot of people just parked there while they figure out what to do.
Or they're parked there because their parents think they should go.
Or they're parked there because their parents' friends' kids are in college, so the parents keeping up with the Jones want to make sure their kids go to college.
And then there is the genuine belief that going to college equals an education, and there's no disputing the fact that a college-educated individual has much greater earning power than a non-college educated individual in when you're talking about masses of people.
But it isn't for everyone.
And college tuition just continues to skyrocket.
In fact, the entire college experience, every expense associated with it continues to rise.
And there are people that talk about it, but there is no, like we got big oil, and we hate them.
Raise gasoline price.
Big retail.
Big Walmart.
Big food.
But there's no Hatred.
There's no suspicion of big education.
And we never hear liberal politicians accusing the people in big education of ripping people off.
And clearly they are being ripped off.
Now, one of the reasons for it is that college is where liberals get hold of young skulls full of mush and mold them and flake them and do whatever they do to propagandize them and turn them into good little marching liberal robots.
And of course, who is it that teaches?
Who is it that's employed at most colleges?
It's liberals.
And of course, we want them to earn a good living, just like we want public sector employees to earn a living.
So we're not going to be that upset with high tuition costs because it's paying our fellow liberal professors a lot of money, or comparatively so.
But it is a default thing.
You do it because it's the next thing you do.
It's sort of like after you get married, having kids, that's the next thing you do after you get married for a while.
Just a lot of people have kids, have no business doing it.
A lot of people have kids not because they really want to, but it's just the next thing that you should.
And there are a lot of people who do what they do because they think it's the next thing they should do.
And what Peter Thiel is trying to find here is people who are willing to exist outside the assembly line, outside of the default position, and go there.
And I'm all for it.
You know, I love upsetting Apple cards.
And I love busting conventional wisdom.
But unlike liberals, if you want to go to college, fine, I am not going to condemn you or condemn your choice or what have you.
With the same token, I will never be one demanding that you go either.
Now some of you might be saying, well, you can't know what you would do as a parent because you aren't one.
I know a lot of you people who you if I if I if I had a high school graduate, I'd be just like my dad, panicked if my kid didn't want to go to college.
I don't know.
Who can know until it actually happens?
Depends on whether my kid was a worthless shred of human debris or not.
If my kid was a worthless shred of human debris, I don't know what I do, but the kid showed potential.
Based on my own experiences, I would uh be very keen to what I could figure out my kid was interested in.
Would I make them get a job?
Well, these are tough questions.
Hell yes, they're gonna get a job.
They're gonna get a job right now.
They may get a job going through college.
They may pay for part of it themselves.
I happen to think that the way I was raised was pretty good.
And look back on it, and I think there were some pretty good values that I was raised with.
And uh I wouldn't want a free loader.
I wouldn't want a kid thinking being a freeloader is possible with me, and I certainly wouldn't want a trust funder.
But I say that now.
But I spoil my cats.
I don't know what would happen if it, you know, if it if it really happened to me.
I you know, portray myself as something to be a real, real hard ass.
But who knows if that would be the case if the circumstance ever uh happened to me.
Anyway, a brief time out here, ladies and gentlemen.
We'll come back and uh and resume shortly.
More of your phone calls coming up right after this.
Okay, now here's a here's a great follow-up story to what I just did.
Our just our last discussion on college.
It's uh story from the Atlanticwire.com.
Nearly half of Americans are living in a state of financial fragility.
According to a new paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
To determine this statistic, researchers from the George Washington School of Business at Princeton and the Harvard Business School asked survey participants whether they would be able to come up with $2,000 for an unexpected expense in the next month.
Fifty percent of Americans said they would not be able to come up with $2,000 in a month.
Now, I don't know if this means they credit cards don't have enough limit to borrow against.
I don't know if this means they couldn't get a loan.
I don't know if it means they couldn't get this much in the ATM.
I don't, but I think I'm pretty sure what it means.
They did there's no way to go grab a lump sum of $2,000.
They do not have it.
I mean, you can't sell your house to come up with two grade.
You wouldn't do that, so you you throw that out.
You're not gonna sell your car to come up with two grand.
And most people are not gonna sell their flat screen.
And most people will probably not sell the 10 or 12 cell phones that they have in the house.
Fifty percent of Americans say they could not come up with 2,000, meaning they are living on the financial edge.
The actual number is 46.5%.
Forty-six and a half percent of all Respondents in the survey are living close to the financial edge.
Columbus, Ohio, this is Rob.
You're up next, Bob.
I'm sorry, Bob of the EIB Network.
Hello.
Hey, conservative Cincinnati Bearcats to your rest.
you, sir, very much.
I was calling with a point to make about Harry Reid.
You were discussing earlier how he...
He didn't interpret the uh New York vote as or he did uh interpret the New York vote as a national mandate uh against Medicare reform.
That's right.
Uh but he did not uh interpret Scott Brown's senatorial victory in the uh Democratic Mecca of Massachusetts.
Of course not, nor did he interpret what happened to Wisconsin as a national referendum against public and state unions.
Exactly.
Well what about the interpretation of the 2010 election against uh deficit spending?
I mean, I guess his interpreting skills uh selective.
No, it's just it's classic.
It's proper it's it's the spin.
It's it's it's what the Democrats do.
Harry goes out and says it, it becomes a story in in the media.
The Democrats turn it into a story, and the headline uh to the story read uh New York 26 Proves uh American doesn't want Ryan health care reform.
Then they go out and he'll interview economists and experts about it, and they'll get people to agree, and hence how the Democrats create a news story.
He's the Senate majority leader, so and then they create his news story, and then it goes to the AP, and you get a headline that ends up in every American newspaper and on every American radio news network.
Whether it's true or not, this is how they do it.
This is how they make news with lies and misrepresentations.
It's just one of the realities we're always going to have.
Are you?
It's Rush Limbaugh, the big voice on the right.
Behind the golden EIB microphone.
Here's uh Bruna in Chandler, Arizona.
Bruno, great to have you on the program.
Hi, Raj.
It's a pleasure to talk to you.
Thank you.
Pleasure all mine.
Bruna is one of my all-time top ten female names.
Yeah, right.
How many of us do you know?
Um, I want to compliment Snurley, too.
He's extremely polite, and I made him chuckle.
Um, I'm watching Obama as he takes these trips all over the world.
Yeah.
To this great acclaim that he gets in all of these countries because he's not getting it here.
When he goes to events here, it's something that's staged, or he has to have a captive audience.
He reminds me of the dear leader, Kim Jong-il.
I mean, this guy, he's got to have this adulation all the time.
Now he's over there in England trying to get Cameron to agree on the 67 borders.
Yeah.
I know.
He's trying to get the British PM to agree on the 67 borders.
Do you hear what Obama said that he and Cameron are the equivalent of Reagan and Thatcher.
Oh, yeah.
Do you believe that?
I mean, this guy is latching on to everything he can get his hands on to make himself look good because he doesn't look all that good.
Unfortunately, Democrats know one thing.
Their voters are stupid.
They'll vote for him again, and a lot of Jewish people will vote for him again because they don't check out what this guy is really like.
It's like he's got this Samantha Power, who's his top um uh person for uh responsibility for tech thing that's her her deal.
So he's a top advisor on national security.
Mary Sun uh Sunstein.
And in two thousand and two, she was giving an interview and saying that uh she thought we should arm the Palestinians.
Now you tell me that this guy is in favor of Israel.
He's not.
No, of course he's not.
You know he wants look, he wants to be the president who secured quote unquote Middle East peace.
That's what he wants.
He didn't care what it is.
He doesn't care what that means.
He wants the uh the medal.
He wants the award.
First president to bring U.S. peace.
I got Bin Laden, I brought peace.
That's that's that's what he wants.
Um but I you know, y you you've you you're discussing him as though he can't be beat.
I think he's imminently beatable.
I think he can be beat.
I know what it would take.
I mean, it's not going to be easy, don't misunderstand, but he's not the slam dunk that everybody thinks.
You know, Shelby Steele has an interesting piece today.
I admire Shelby Steele's writing.
He's got an interesting piece.
Uh you know, I better find it.
This is worth quoting rather than paraphrasing.
He also thinks Obama can be beat, but he thinks, however, that Obama still can benefit from being the first black president, that he still has, there's still value in that.
This presidency flatters America to a degree that no white Republican can hope to match.
That's the headline.
Shelby Steele's peace.
Now, when you hear that headline, and you haven't read the accompanying story, you might think, okay, this presidency flatters America to a degree that no white Republican can hope to match.
You might think Obama, well, of course he can give away things that no Republican will give away.
That's not what Shelby Steele means.
What he means is that Obama by virtue of being president is a walking testimonial to the greatness of America.
That a guy from a group of people who were slaves from that race of people can become president of the United States and therefore the most powerful man in the world says more about America than any nation in the world.
That Obama as president, just occupying the office, not even doing anything, just occupying the office is a greater testament to the greatness and the uniqueness of this country.
And Mr. Steele says that white guys cannot hope to have that same aura about the country be realized or felt if they are because we've always had white guy presidents.
It's still novel and still unique enough.
I'm not sure I totally agree.
Now he also says that Obama can be beat, and he lays out how to do it.
His term is social exceptionalism.
He says the media hold the president's exceptionalism in that many simply that's that's his race.
A black president still makes this an exceptional country.
Doesn't matter what the black president does or even the f that who it is, it's just that fact alone represents an American triumph.
That a white president can't hope to tap.
The media hold the president's exceptionalism against Republicans.
Here's Barack Obama, evidence of a new and progressive America.
Here are the Republicans, a cast of largely white males looking peculiarly unevolved.
And to this the Republicans' quite laudable focus on deficit reduction and spending cuts, and they can be made to look like a gaggle of scolding accountants.
So how can the GOP combat the president's cultural charisma?
Well, it'll have to make vivid the yawning gulf between Obama the flattering icon and Obama the confused and often overwhelmed president.
Go ahead and applaud the exceptionalism he represents, but deny him the right to ride on it as a kind of affirmative action.
A president who is both democratic and black effectively gives the infamous race card to the entire left.
Attack our president, you're a racist.
Now to thwart this, Republicans will have to break through the barrier of political correctness.
Mr. McCain let himself be intimidated by Obama's blackness, his cultural charisma, threatening to fire any staff member who even used the candidate's middle name.
Donald Trump shot to the head of the class by focusing on Obama as a president, calling him our worst president.
I carry no brief for Trump, writes Shelby Steele.
But his sudden success makes a point.
Another kind of charisma redounds to those willing to challenge political correctness, those unwilling to be enthralled to the president's cultural charisma.
In other words, get over it.
Get over it and stop being cowed by political correctness.
Treat him as the president.
Not somebody of affirmative action, not somebody special, not somebody he's the president.
It's sort of like Newt and his reaction to David Gregory on Meet the Press when Gregory came up with this BS question about Food Stamp America being racist.
And Newt looked at him and said, You gotta are you you've got to be serious.
He's president of the United States for crying out loud.
He's got to be accountable.
Forty seven million Americans are on food stamps, the majority of them are white.
What are you talking about?
Race.
In other words, what he's what Shelby Steele is saying is do not be afraid to criticize him as president doing a lousy job.
Amen, bro.
Amen.
You know, every time Shelby Steele publishes a piece, I find that we're on the same page.
And it makes me very proud.
Here's Donna in Middletown, Maryland.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
It's so good of you to have me on your show today.
Thank you very much.
And um I'm also my husband and I are proud heritage members.
Good for you.
Um love it.
And um so proud to be part of that.
Um, what I want to share with you is I think what the Republican Party desperately needs is a solid, proud, uh, basically fearless uh individual who's principled and um, you know, says what he means and means and does what he says, much like um Benjamin Netanyahu.
Yep, Netanyahu has taken everybody to school.
Netanyahu's shown house.
You know what makes Netanyahu Netanyahu?
What do you think?
What is it that makes?
Let me just ask you.
What is it that makes Netanyahu Netanyahu?
He's principled, he's proud, he's conservative, he's um he he's everything he portrays himself.
But wait, wait, no, there are a lot of principled conservatives.
There are a lot of proud conservatives, but they're not Benjamin Netanyahu.
What makes Benjamin Netanyahu, Benjamin Netanyahu?
There is an answer here.
I don't mean to be putting you on the spot, but No, I I'm enjoying it actually.
I think he's a solid individual.
Um, and he's got uh very um, I'd say a strong belief system, and he's honest.
You are getting warmer, but it's a one-word answer.
Okay.
Um begins with a P. I mean, I said principled, um, and I said proud.
Passion.
Oh, absolutely.
How could I miss it?
It is passion that allows Netanyahu to animate those principles, to bring them to life.
His beliefs, his policies, his ability to conduct himself as he did in the Oval Orifice, or yesterday at the uh the joint meeting of Congress, the passion that he believes, the passion for his beliefs, the desire to shout them from the mountaintop, the desire to be understood, the desire for nobody to be confused after they've heard him speak, but it is passion.
Excitement, eagerness, good ch passion is what brings all of the ingredients to life.
And it is passion that is the magnet that draws people to you.
I mean, if you listen to two schlubs talk about bowling in a passionate way, they own you.
Passion is the key.
Republican Party needs some passion.
And I'm sorry, folks, moderates just don't have any.
you Thank you.
You know what Netanyahu means in Hebrew?
Netanyahu in Hebrew means gift of the Lord.
Or talent on loan from God.
We'll see you tomorrow, folks, open line Friday Eve.
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