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Aug. 19, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:43
August 19, 2011, Friday, Hour #2
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It is open line Friday.
Pleasure to have you here.
There's a delightful free wheeling air that accompanies any open line Friday, both in the calls I'm looking at here on the screen and the ideas that are popping into my head.
Plenty more 2012 talk, to be sure, plenty more immigration talk.
In fact, we're going to go to calls first, but then I will get to a gentleman whose story it's a Florida teacher suspended for some hot opinions on gay marriage that he put on his personal Facebook page.
This is something we probably uh don't address enough because there needs to be an answer.
It seems like it's a question that should have an answer.
And that answer has been elusive.
That question is, what can you get away with on your personal Facebook page or your personal Twitter account?
Does your employer have a right to take a look at the very visible stance you may take on Facebook if you have a whole lot of friends, or on Twitter if you have a whole lot of followers, and rain down some consequences on you.
Isn't it just like standing up on a on a on a soap box with a megaphone saying stuff?
Does it reflect back on the employer to the extent that the employer can fire you or suspend you or otherwise punish you for things you say that ostensibly seem like your First Amendment rights on your Facebook or your Twitter.
And there's a story of a Florida teacher I'll get to here, and if if not this segment, then the next, because I'm going to hop onto some calls here on the the various other things that we've uh that we brought up.
1-800-282-2882, Mark Davis filling in from WBAP in Dallas Fort Worth.
Speaking of Twitter, if you want to uh hop onto my uh small growing army of people, uh just Mark Davis, all one word on Twitter, M-A-R-K-D-A-V-I-S, Mark Davis on Twitter, and I put stuff up there.
Whenever I'm going to fill in again, I'll give you that alert so you can either rush toward the radio or make other plans and uh just various things going on here and in my world.
Mark Davis on Twitter if you want to do that, M-A-R-K-D-A-V-Is.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
And speaking of the internet, always, even when the guest hosts are in, always make sure you visit rushlimbaugh.com.
All righty, in one of the prettiest sounding towns in America, there between, I guess, Chicago and Rockford, Lake in the Hills, Illinois.
Paul, Mark Davis, in for rush, how you doing, sir.
Yeah, good day, Mark.
Uh, this new immigration policy is going to have countless bureaucrats deciding who stays and who goes.
Now, some of these will be able to uh do a good job at it.
Others will be driven by ideology, but I also believe a significant number will be driven by greed, which means bribes will take place, etc.
And even though we're trying to keep the bad people out, they're gonna get in anyway.
I believe this is a really bad idea, and that this should be, as it has been, a job for law enforcement and that those that knew what they're doing in the process.
Yeah, exactly right.
I mean, we will find s the way we discover illegal immigrants can vary widely.
Sometimes we discover them right after they shoot and kill a cop.
Sometimes we find them just in a traffic stop.
Either way, we have found someone who needs to be ushered out of the country.
And to create this this prioritization uh that that the DHS now envisions at Homeland Security, uh the Janet Napolitano Letter said this will enhance public safety by focusing deportation efforts on those who pose a threat.
All illegal immigration poses a threat of varying severity, of course, but this is an attempt to shut down our our degree of caring about a huge percentage of illegal immigrants who are just here for our jobs.
Yeah, I just figure what's what part of illegal do they not understand?
I know.
Well it's it's the forgotten word.
We're referred to as anti-immigration.
No one is anti well, I know a couple of folks who are.
No one is anti-immigration.
We're anti-illegal immigration.
Thanks, man.
Appreciate it a lot.
In fact, uh for for a little bit of a snapshot study in in this kind of thing and how the language means stuff.
Have we caught the very odd MSNBC marketing campaign of late, this thing called lean forward?
I guess because lean left just seems a little too blatant.
And there's a big smiling Chris Matthews.
And uh it's in in his supposed handwriting, and it says the great this is a full page ad in some magazine I read on the plane.
It said the great thing about America is that the people who tend to be on the right side of things are those who are embracing liberty.
That's funny.
I said, wow, that's a great sentence from Chris Matthews.
I couldn't agree more.
Yeah, well, keep reading.
Because the definition of liberty can be an interesting one depending on whose brain and whose mouth or whose hand it comes from.
And uh he he then set out a myth of equivalency in the following couple of sentences, saying that the right side of various arguments, the people that tend to make America great are the people who are taking the right side in these various liberty debates, whether it is rights for African Americans or rights for women or immigrants or gays.
Whoa.
Two of these things are not like the other, to paraphrase uh to loosely paraphrase Sesame Street.
Uh this is the myth of equivalency.
And I mention this in the midst of an immigration debate, because if you're talking about whether you know black folks should uh should or should not be slaves, that absolutely is a basic right about whether or not there should be a civil rights act in 1964 about whether you know all manner of basic decency should be afforded people of color, uh that's an obvious no-brainer.
When you talk about the basic women's rights.
It is shocking to me still how long we went before we gave women the right to vote.
Hello.
So of course that's a basic right.
You should not have to be denied the right to vote because you're a woman for crying out loud.
That is a basic right.
But then we venture into things that are not rights.
They're just things that some people feel very passionate about, which is fine.
Gay rights and so and immigrant rights.
I mean, gay rights, for example, is the perfect example.
We have a big debate going on all over the place all the time about various rights in the gay community.
And that's fine.
Let's have that debate.
But the notion that there is a right, a right, a right for gay marriage to be viewed as the legal equal of heterosexual marriage, that's not a right.
Something does not become a right just because you really want it badly.
It does not become a right.
Immigrant rights, I don't know what the heck they're talking about, except the right to be here illegally.
What immigrant right is denied?
If you are here legally, you've got the same rights as everybody else.
You're here legally.
If you become a citizen, you're a citizen no matter where you're from.
That's fantastic.
We love that.
I I'm the most pro-immigration.
One of my most one of the proudest things I have ever done.
One of the my favorite things I've ever done.
As people who do this for a living will do, we will tend to roll out for some speaking engagements.
Tends to be a lot of political clubs or civic organizations or this or that, and I'm always glad to do it.
But one of my favorites of the last, I mean, I've been here in the Dallas Fort Worth area now for like seventeen years, whether it was Memphis or Jacksonville or Washington before that, everywhere I've ever worked.
This was one of my favorite things.
I spoke at a naturalization ceremony in Dallas.
I stood actually it was in Plano, the suburb north of Dallas, and I looked out over an ocean of a couple of thousand people.
They were here, they were born in places from Mexico to Malaysia, India to Indonesia, Canada to Calcutta, Morocco to Mexico.
They had one thing in common.
They all wanted to be Americans so badly that they followed the rule of law, jumped through the hoops we make people jump through, took the tests, walked through the fire that we established to become an American citizen, and they stood there looking up at me, and I had to somehow craft words to say to them what their toils had meant to me.
And I clumsily cobbled together some things on the way over.
And I said that I talk a lot on the show about illegal immigration, and it makes people think that that I don't like immigrants.
The exact opposite is true.
You guys right here are some of my favorite Americans right now.
I know a lot of people who are born in this country as I was, who I would, You know what I don't give uh a flip about.
You guys are my favorite Americans today.
I'm I am American just by accident of birth.
My dad was in the Air Force station at Randolph Air Force Base, married my mom, boom, San Antonio, 1957, I'm born.
I did nothing, nothing to earn or or to deserve the unparalleled joy of being an American citizen, except ax geographic accident of birth.
But you folks, you folks came from other places and wanted to be an American.
Made a conscious choice to do what's necessary to become American citizens.
And you could have come here illegally.
You could have crawled across the Rio Grande if that's what the direction you're coming, or somehow uh snaked off a plane on the East Coast or the West Coast.
You could have done that.
Because Lord knows it's pretty easy to disappear into the tapestry of America, but you didn't.
You did it right.
You did it legally.
And today, right now, you sit in your chairs looking up at me on this stage, and we are all equally American.
You are just as American as I am, even though I've been American for about fifty years and you've been American for about ten minutes, we are all equally American, and that is what is so great about this country.
You can't go to France and become French.
You can come from everywhere and be American.
And it is the strength of this country.
We are a nation of immigrants.
Legal immigrants who followed the law to be here the right way.
There was no honor greater than addressing that naturalization ceremony.
So I will be damned if you'll excuse me.
If anyone will point some finger at me because of my conservatism and my feelings about illegal immigration, and call me anti-immigrant.
And on that ridiculous Chris Matthews full page ad, but you know, you gotta be on the side of liberty, the side of freedom for people.
You know, the blacks and women stuff, yeah, that was about you know not being a slave and being able to vote, you bet.
Those are basic rights.
But what what exact kind of immigrant rights are we talking about?
What?
The right to be here illegally?
I don't think so.
And as far as gay folks, uh to get back into the twenty twelve race, Rick Perry's right about this too.
It's a state's rights issue.
If New York wants to have gay marriage, they can have gay marriage.
Don't like that, move to New York, fight against it, get it overturned.
In your state, when it comes to your state capital, your state legislature, guess what?
You get to make the same call.
Have gay marriage as the legal equal to heterosexual marriage, or not.
The people make the choice.
That's what the Constitution says.
So, um a lot to tie together there, uh, issue wise.
So let me go ahead and take a break, come back, get some calls in.
And uh also uh more calls in, and also the Florida teacher.
Speaking of gay marriage, a Florida teacher shares an opinion or two about gay marriage on the occasion of the New York adoption of it, and uh gets in trouble because of his Facebook posts.
Tell you about that next.
Mark Davis on the EIB network filling in for rush.
It is the Friday Rush Limbaugh Show, and that is always open line Friday, even when the guest hosts take over.
Only when asked.
Mark Davis from WBAP Dallas Fort Worth, great to be with you.
And it will be great to be with you.
Thursday and Friday of next week.
Rush is off all next week.
Uh Mark Stein will be in on Monday.
I always love I I look forward to the other marks, the other we have we seem to mutually admire each other.
Uh and uh Mark Stein is great on Monday, Mark Belling will be in on Tuesday, Wednesday.
Always enjoy him, and then you and I are back together on Thursday and Friday.
Let's take care of a call or two, and then we'll go to the Florida teacher uh stung by Facebook.
Uh we are headed first to McAllen, Texas.
Ben, hi, Mark Davis in for Rush.
How are you?
How are you doing, Mark?
Great.
Hey, um about the illegal immigration, plain devil's advocate here, but it is a necessary evil.
Why?
I mean, it's like being here in the valley in the border town where I see it.
I've worked growing up side by side illegal immigrants.
They are the hardest working people that I've ever come across.
No doubt.
The ones that do have and even they have problems with the people that come to leech off the system.
Because they lower the standards for the for the Americans, that system, like the welfare system.
It's set for American citizens that are here to come and fall upon hard times.
Right.
But when you have these women, illegal women that come and have four or five babies, one right after the other.
And I'm not lying.
I mean, I've seen it.
Please.
You have no trouble convincing me.
And you're going to the store, H E B or Walmart, wherever, to buy whatever groceries you have to buy.
And you see these ladies with their loan star cards or food stamps buying quality pieces of meat, and you're buying you're buying the cheapest that you can.
That is very upset.
Well, and and right there, and and right there is the perfect uh evidence of why we can't go picking and choosing the illegals we're going to be cavalier about.
I mean, I I know, and then down in McAllen, which for the uninitiated is d I mean, we're talking down hard by the border.
You're talking right there.
You can you can walk to the Rio Grande from there, and it's a beautiful part of Texas and a great part of Texas and a very controversial part of Texas.
I know that there are plenty of folks who are coming across the border a mile from where you're sitting right now, and they don't intend to commit any crimes, and they don't e they don't really don't want to be a burden to the system.
They're gonna come, they're gonna work hard and you know send the money back to the family and not violate a single other law of ours.
But the one that they have violated merely by being here is the one that we have to be serious about.
Because if we're unserious about it, along with that noble guy, you know, from Juarez who comes across to El Paso or wherever, along with that guy who has no uh criminal intent other than violating our immigration laws, along with him through that porous border come people who do indeed uh have criminal intent.
Now, keep in mind, my wife is originally from Mexico.
I married her.
We went through the whole legal process, like you're saying, it is a time and lengthy process.
But it is costly.
Now, people from Mexico, they barely have enough to scrape to eat.
I mean, I I know this because you know, my wife's family members I send food on a monthly basis over there for her family members.
God bless you.
I mean, and it's like, hey, you know, they can't scrape enough to eat, but yet they're expected to pay thousands in immigration costs, lawyers cost, all that.
I mean it there's gotta be a better way.
Well, I tell you what, and on that i i I've always felt first of all, you're you're completely right.
And I've always felt as as a hardliner about uh illegal immigration.
I've always felt that there ought to be something we can do to make it easier for the pe the for the kind of folks we want who have skills we need and you know uh attributes we admire to become Americans legally.
Uh was it Herman Kane who talked about the thing about about uh w wide uh h high gates and wide fences or high fences and wide gates of I I'll be the I'll I'll step in and and join you in a in a a stipulation that it is it is too hard to become an American legally.
It is.
I I and and so I I will join with anybody who wants to try to figure this all out.
And Ben, thank you for weighing in from the the most significant place geographically that you could, right there from the Texas Mexico border, uh, that if we are going to be hardliners and we're gonna deport the living daylights out of people, which I absolutely want to do, let us, with what is left of our brain space on this issue, figure out a way uh to to welcome a few more of the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
And I'll tell you, I'm I'm more than willing to do it, but it's gotta be in a certain order.
We absolutely have to be serious about enforcing our borders.
We have to get seriously uh conscientious about deporting those who are here illegally, and then and then I believe we can and should start to take a look at how bone crushingly hard it can be to become uh an American legal.
It's funny, just to go back to the the anecdote that I just shared about uh about uh speaking at that uh naturalization ceremony of the story we all we all gathered in the lobby, they had a little little little coffee, little reception, everybody waving their American flags no matter where they had been from.
It was just the most moving and wonderful thing.
And almost everyone I spoke to had a couple of stories to tell.
The first and most important story was how proud they were to be an American that day.
How they still loved and felt a connection to the country of their birth, but they wanted to become an American, and that is where their allegiances would lie from that day forward as proud, naturalized Americans.
And that's a story told by every single one of them.
The other story told by virtually every single one of them is they can't believe how hard it was.
Said it was worth it.
They'd do it again.
I mean, they'd do it in a heartbeat.
I mean, of course.
Totally worth it.
But man, it was hard.
And they asked me, they said, should it be that hard?
Should it be that hard?
That's a very, very good question.
That we can address in what's left of our time together today on the Friday, Rush Limbaugh Show.
I'm Mark Davis filling in on the EIB network.
Back in a moment.
It is open line Friday, 1800-282-2882.
More of your calls just a moment.
Mark Davis filling in from WBAP, Dallas Fort Worth, Proud Limbaugh affiliate since, oh my.
Well, since I pretty well got here, roughly 1994.
All right, uh more of your calls here in a second, but let's uh share the story of Jerry Buell, who teaches American history at Mount Dora High School, Lake County, Florida, just up there northwest of Orlando.
Right there, smack dab in the center of that beautiful state.
Now, I'm going to share this story, and it it will probably get your ideological juices flowing, and that's fine, that's great.
But then I have uh a consistency check for you on the other side, so so just follow me along here and then we'll see what we think, because the bottom line, the overall uh theme here is what should you be able to get away with uh in terms of hot political rants that you put on your Facebook and your Twitter.
Obviously, you have the First Amendment right uh to blather whatever you like, uh, you know, without being jailed for it.
That's what the First Amendment's all about.
A lot of people totally mistake the First Amendment.
You remember when people uh tried to defend uh the Dixie chicks?
Uh, when the enormously talented but politically stunted Natalie Maines stepped out on a stage in Florida and stepped out of a stage in England and said, just so y'all know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.
Oh, really, honey?
Let's see what happens to that career.
Well, obviously, they've done quite well because they're enormously talented, they're still selling records and you know, do with that as you may.
But for a while there, country radio, I don't I don't know if I don't know if the Dixie chicks are even played on country radio hardly anywhere anymore.
And that's probably cost them a few bucks.
And I remember when we were talking about that, people said, Hey, First Amendment, first amendment.
Uh nah.
Not a First Amendment issue.
Uh you th that's a marketplace issue.
Stations can play whatever they want.
You remember John Rocker, controversial pitcher, had a bunch of things.
He had a lot of thoughts.
He had a few thoughts about immigration himself, as you may recall.
And he was uh punished by uh his employer in baseball.
And people said, Hey, First Amendment, first amendment.
I knew.
And knew.
All the First Amendment is about is your right to say something without being jailed.
The First Amendment does not shield you from the consequences of what you say.
And there may be people out there saying things you agree with, there may be people out there saying things you disagree with, but if let's say their employers uh are freaked out by it, they can absolutely be sanctioned.
But wait a minute, what if it's on their own personal time or their own personal Facebook or Twitter?
Uh-huh.
Social networking, providing a talk show cornucopia.
So here's the latest story.
Jerry Buell, a veteran American history teacher at Mount Dora High School in Florida.
Removed from his teaching duties this week as school officials in Lake County investigate allegations that what he posted was biased on homosexuality.
We took the allegations seriously, said Chris Patton, communications officer with Lake County Schools is from uh Fox News.com.
All teachers are bound by a code of special ethics, and this is a code ethics violation investigation.
Huh?
All right.
Ethics.
Interesting.
So if you're a teacher in this county or anywhere, are you ethically bound to keep your political, your hot political views to yourself for fear of alienating, I don't know, students or the community or something like that.
So Chris Patton, the community, sort of the spokesman for the school system, said they received a complaint on Tuesday about something that Buell had written last July when New York legalized same sex unions.
The very next day he was temporarily suspended from the classroom and reassigned.
He has taught for twenty-two years, has a spotless record, was selected as that high school's teacher of the year, but now his job is on the line for his opinions about gay marriage.
A quote from him, he said he was stunned by the accusations.
It was my own personal comment on my own personal time on my own personal computer in my own personal house, exercising what I believed as a social studies teacher to be my first amendment rights.
Okay.
So far the guy's won me over.
I'm thinking, okay, I mean, uh do you if you're a teacher, no matter who you are, do you completely uh d do you do you shed any trappings of of liberty in terms of expressing yourself in in your own public space?
Now here's the thing.
Your own public space used to be your house.
Your own public space used to be uh, you know, a gathering of friends in your backyard, or maybe a meeting after church with five or ten or maybe thirty people gathered around if you were lucky to get that many people to pay attention to you.
Now on Facebook and Twitter, hundreds, thousands of people can hang on your every word.
Well, what if those words are shall we say controversial?
Well, the school system declined to comment on what exactly he had put on Facebook.
But I'll tell you what it was.
You ready?
July twenty fifth, five forty-three PM.
He was eating dinner, watching the evening news, and there was the news about New York giving legal uh equality to same sex unions.
Mr. Buell, veteran American history teacher, teacher of the year, Lake Mount Dora High School, Lake County, Florida puts on his Facebook page as follows.
I'm watching the news eating dinner when the story about New York okaying same sex unions came on, and I almost threw up.
And now they show two guys kissing after the announcement.
If they want to call it a union, go ahead, but don't insult a man and a woman's marriage by throwing it in the same cesspool of whatever.
God will not be mocked.
When did this sin become acceptable?
Yeah.
Start starting to see how this becomes a story.
So again, if you're just joining us, teacher of the year, Mount Dora, Florida, throws down some hot opinions about gay marriage on his Facebook and gets in trouble.
Oh, he wasn't done.
Three minutes later.
By the way, if one doesn't like the most recently posted opinion based on biblical principles and God's laws, then go ahead and unfriend me.
I'll miss you like I miss my kidney stone from 1994, and I'll never accept it because God will never accept it.
Romans chapter one.
Well, all righty then.
So according to the school system, what Mr. Buell wrote on his private account was Disturbing.
Hmm.
They were especially concerned that gay students at the school might be frightened or intimidated walking into his classroom.
And then Mr. Patton of the school system, the spokesman, disputed the notion that Buell's Facebook account is private.
Quote, he has more than seven hundred friends.
How private is that?
Social media can be troubling if you don't respect it and know that just because you think you're in a private realm, it's not private.
Now wait a cotton pick a minute.
The definition of private has changed just because your audience grows in social networking?
Isn't I mean it's weird.
It is still your private world, right?
My Facebook page, my Twitter account, yours.
Those are your private comments, your private realm, you set it up privately in your personal space.
The only thing that's changed is the enormous expansion of our personal space that social networking is created.
All of a sudden, things that really are your private business do come across with the magnitude of public pronouncements.
Um Mr. Buell's attorney says the school district is being anti straight, anti First Amendment, and anti personal liberty.
The idea that public servants have to wholeheartedly endorse homosexual marriage is repugnant to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Okay, hang on there, Mr. Counselor.
I don't think anybody is saying that he has to embrace it.
It's just that if he's not going to embrace it, he may not be able to spew about it on his Facebook page.
Is that problematic?
Let me ask you the following question, then we'll hit the break, we'll come back, take calls on this, and everything else we've talked about.
After all, it is open line Friday.
Now, here's the deal.
Imagine if you're sitting here thinking Mr. Buell has been horribly wronged here.
He has every right to uh to toss out uh those those those opinions, and maybe you're thinking that way because you agree with him.
Okay, that's fine.
Would you have the same protective instinct for someone for a teacher or whoever who had thrown down views that you disagree with?
If let's say somebody had said, uh let's say there's a teacher who says, you know, socialism, not bad.
Let's say there's a teacher who says, you know, uh Obamacare, fantastic.
And and the wealthy should pay a whole lot more taxes than they do.
They're leeches on the system.
Right?
Let's say there's all kinds of things.
Or let's say that uh, hey, you know, um uh Republicans are uh are anti uh the immigration, they're anti-black, they're anti-woman, they're anti planet.
Right again, I'm just offering up a wide spate of of what might be the blatherings of a teacher revealing some fairly uh common liberal thoughts.
And let's say a school suspended that teacher.
Would you rush to that teacher's defense and say, hey, hey, hey, that's his own personal space.
That's his own face.
Does it does consistency require you to?
Does consistency require you to seek to protect the job of the teacher who gets vocal on Facebook or Twitter about things you disagree with?
Seems like it's got to be one or the other, doesn't it?
That you either believe that employees need to be that that you need to be careful about your Facebook and your Twitter, because if it reflects badly on the employer, it makes the employer uncomfortable, they can rain down on you.
Or the opposite is true, and it's your personal deal.
No employer should ever be able to touch you for anything you say on your own personal Facebook or Twitter, which is it.
Let us add that to the topical mix on this open line Friday.
Mark Davis filling in for Rush on the EIB network.
It is open line Friday on the Rush Limbaugh show, Mark Davis filling in.
Let's do some calls.
Got a lot of stuff on immigration, a lot of stuff on 2012.
Uh, but just on the the little bit of the uh when when Facebook and Twitter rear up and bite you, uh let us head say again.
Let's uh it was would Okay, very good.
Then let's uh while we were going to go to Fort Wayne.
Adam, if you get us back, you can, because he added uh a little bit of an anecdotal story about some of that.
Uh secondly, then why do we head to Los Angeles?
Say hi to Eric.
Eric, Mark Davis on for Rush.
How are you?
Hey, very good.
Thank you, Mark.
Uh the point I was wanting to make uh was that something that's uh often missed uh in the conversation about illegal immigration.
Uh I I I respect the call that came in earlier from the Texas border, and that's a fairly small population base there, and uh a lot different than impact that illegal immigration is having on areas, let's say like Los Angeles.
There's entire swaths of Los Angeles that are uh filled with completely unassimilated people that have absolutely no motivation to assimilate.
It so happens they're Mexican.
I don't care if they're Irish or German or Norwegian or black, you know, the the fact that there's a large unassimilated population with no motivation and no incentive to to assimilate into our system, I mean all the other economic things aside,
and all the other cultural uh impacts that they have aside, the fact that they're unassimilated and they will not assimilate is a problem for this country, especially when we have politicians that are now uh pandering to uh uh to them, even though they can't vote, and they they think they're they think they're uh egratiating themselves to someone with a hen with a Hispanic surname because they're they're well.
The sad fact is the sad fact is that they are.
And this makes me crazy.
Can I have some of my Hispanic brothers and sisters explain this to me why so many of you are lackadaisical about what Eric is talking about in Los Angeles?
How does it not make you insane if you were here from Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, and are here legally or even became a citizen?
How are you not the loudest protesters at the sight and sound of people who look like you and come from where you came from and have names that sound like yours, breaking the laws of the United States in order to cut in line?
How does that not make all of you crazy?
It does some of you.
I know plenty of conservative Hispanics, but uh or uh you don't even have to be conservative.
You can be liberal on all kinds of issues and have this make you nuts.
I don't know why it doesn't.
Well, what kind of credibility do we have as a as a as a country and as a people when we when we look at someone from, say, South Korea who who doesn't share a border with us and tell them you have to wait so many years and it costs you so much money to come here.
I know.
And then and then and then they they look at us and say, well, what about these millions of people that you that you let in and let work and and give welfare to?
our credibility.
It is shot full of holes, Eric, and thanks for the great points.
Um it's it's it I talked about consistency a moment ago.
Uh laws have to speak with a voice of consistency and clarity.
We are either serious about who's in this country legally or we are not.
If we're not, then throw open the borders and we can just stop talking about this and see what happens to the fabric of America when we just stop caring about these things.
And believe you me, there are plenty of people who would love for us to take that very step.
But for those who care about the rule of law, and for those who care about letting into America only those who are are willing to obey our laws to get here, then we'd best step up and get serious about that.
And I I'm really glad that uh that Eric mentioned assimilation, because uh no matter where you live, well, I mean, there are some places it's easier to find than others.
Uh I my heart is properly warmed by people who come here from other lands and learn our language.
Mayor, can you imagine how tough it is to learn English?
Many of the people who are born here don't have a quite the handle on it, so I can only imagine if you're coming here from China or Vietnam or Mexico or you know, Sweden, I don't care.
And and your job is to learn English, whew, I will I am prepared to give you some time to master this tricky, tricky tongue of ours.
But you do have to try.
And I'm also properly enriched by the vast rainbow of cultures that people bring to this country.
You are from Africa, from Asia, from Europe, from Latin America somewhere.
You bring part of that with you to infuse and uh adds add flavor to the type of American that you're going to be.
But you'd better be willing to become an American.
And becoming an American doesn't mean purging where you came from or never speaking your native tongue again or you know no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Just participate in the country you've chosen to occupy.
That's all.
And in far too many communities.
You find enclaves, cocoons, bubbles, where everybody's talking to each other in that other tongue, and there's no need to there's there's no need to speak English.
There's no need to to interact with with the English speaking world outside that bubble.
And I'm sorry, that tears at the fabric of any country.
So I love that s everybody's from somewhere else.
I love that.
But once you are from somewhere else, you better get hip to the fact that you're here and let us welcome the things that are different about all of us.
But along with that comes the responsibility to latch on to some of the things that give us uh commonality.
Common language being near the top of the list.
Uh a co n not necessarily all common values.
We don't have to agree on everything, but uh a certain common appreciation of uh of the American story and American history and American uh uh exceptionalism, if I may invoke that.
All right, I'll invoke some other things too here in just a moment.
I bet you will too.
1-800-282-2882, Mark Davis in for rush on the EIB network.
All righty, less than a minute left in this hour.
Mark Davis filling in for rush.
We will uh return after the top of the hour break and get in some folks on the teacher uh suspended because of his Facebook comments.
We'll uh put folks to a consistency check there.
Got some more twenty twelve talk, some more immigration talk.
Stocks have drifted lower.
I don't know how psychologically important this is to you, but uh it's not a huge drop right now.
About 70 down, about 70 points down.
But that does does take us below 11,000.
Uh some of the techs, uh Hewlett Packard and such, uh plunging 20%, dragging some of the blue chips.
So a little stock update as we keep track of that roller coaster.
Meanwhile, Mark Davis Inforush on the EIB network.
Stick around.
We'll come back.
We'll get it's funny because we've talked so much immigration and the Facebook and Twitter, what can you get away with in your workplace issue?
We've haven't gotten to a lot of 2012 talk.
Oh, we will.
We will.
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