All Episodes
Previous Next
July 4, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:34
July 4, 2014, Friday, Hour #1
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Man, you would not believe, maybe you would.
Some of the explanations being offered by the actions of Elliot Roger.
Gloria Olred says it's the mental illness of male chauvinism.
There's a columnist in the UK Guardian that says that Elliot Roger is not crazy by today's standards, that he is all of us.
Someone, what's her name?
Jessica Valenti.
That's where he was driven by sexism, and his ideas are not crazy by today's standards, regardless of his mental health issues.
He's all of us.
Greetings, folks.
And Time magazine, big story on their website, just as you were adjusting the gay marriage, it's time now to prepare yourself for the next tipping point.
And that is transgenders making a move on the dominant culture.
Nearly a year after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, another social movement poised to challenge deeply held cultural beliefs.
And this is the Supreme Court ruling.
If you recall, Antonin Kalias Calias said, look, if this happens, you can forget about it.
Gay marriage is next, and then whoever wants to marry anybody else is probably going to be following that, and there's going to be no end to this.
And so here we go.
The transgender tipping point.
Time magazine, all in favor of this, by the way.
I don't know what the grievance is yet that the transgenders have, but they'll find one.
And they will keep, well, poking.
Whatever it is they want, it's going to be, they're discriminated against.
It's unfair.
It's unjust and so forth.
And America just is mean to the transgender community.
And so it's going to be, they're just going to keep coming at you, folks.
They're just not going to let up.
Greetings.
It's wonderful to have you here at the telephone number.
If you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882, the email address, lrushbo at EIBnet.com.
And as long as there's no pushback to any of this stuff, you can expect more of it to come.
And it certainly shall.
And we'll get to all that.
Remember the other day we played audio soundbites of President Obama's commencement speech to the cadets at West Point.
Was that yesterday?
It seems like.
Was that just yesterday?
Are you kidding me?
Man, it does seem like it's longer than a day ago.
Anyway, do you know that only 25% of the cadets stood or applauded or something when he entered the room or when he left?
I forget which, but it's a really low number.
Yeah, either way, it's a hopeful sign.
But what's funny, you know, we spent a lot of time playing soundbites and trying to parse it, analyze it for you, and I think I did a pretty good job.
I think I got a pretty good handle on Obama's view of this country.
I think I've got a pretty good understanding of what would be called the Obama doctrine.
You can sum it up in two words, but I would like to get more nuanced than that.
But the Obama doctrine basically is that America has been a false superpower, an illegitimate one, not a real one.
We acquired our superpower status in less than honest ways.
And now the world sees us for who we really are.
And we must now demonstrate to the world that we are no longer that cowboy country just running roughshod over everybody, sending our military anywhere we want them to go.
Now, I could get a little bit more nuanced and detail than even that, but the sum total of the Obama doctrine is that there's nothing exceptional about this place, and what everybody thought was exceptional about it was misguided because this country has got too much baggage to ever be considered exceptional.
And we need to apologize and acknowledge that we're aware of that now to the rest of the world so that we will be seen with more friendly eyes.
Well, let's go to the audio soundbites.
We've put together a montage.
This is hilarious.
This is a drive-bys struggling to define the Obama doctrine.
Now, do you remember during the 2008 campaign, the noted ABC World News anchor Charlie Gibson did an interview with Sarah Palin and he asked her if she could explain the Bush doctrine.
And the drive-bys collectively decided after hearing her answer that she had no idea what the Bush doctrine was, which was further evidence that Sarah Palin was an absolute idiot and unqualified and had no business being anywhere near Washington, D.C. to do anything, particularly be the vice presidential nominee on the Republican ticket.
She couldn't explain, they said, satisfactorily to them the Bush doctrine.
Okay?
Well, let's listen to a montage of them, the drive-bys, attempting to define the Obama doctrine.
Has the Obama doctrine finally been defined?
We'll dig deeper on the new Obama doctrine.
If there is an Obama doctrine, would you define it for me?
I don't know that I have a bumper sticker.
Obama doctrine.
Neither two interventionist nor isolationist nor military focused nor not military focused.
What do you make of the so-called Obama doctrine?
The Obama doctrine, a new balance between force and caution.
What is the Obama doctrine?
Speak loudly and carry a soft stick.
What the hell is the Obama doctrine?
That's not the Obama Doctrine.
Unconnected.
Ad hoc decisions.
And that's the Obama doctrine.
What some are calling the Obama doctrine.
Obama doctrine, it's more like a reaffirmation of something that we've seen in the past, the Powell Doctrine.
People looking for the explanation of the Obama doctrine are going to be sorely disappointed.
It's almost like we want another speech.
They can't define it.
There's not a soul out there that can tell you what the Obama doctrine is.
It is absolutely hilarious.
These are the same people that told you and me that Sarah Palin was an absolute glittering jewel of colossal ignorance because she couldn't explain the Bush doctrine.
Can any of you explain the Obama doctrine?
I can.
I'm going to take another stab at it.
It's real simple.
I've got to be very careful here.
The reason why I'm tiptoeing, I mean, I can say this and leave no doubt, but I'm going to tiptoe around it.
I'm going to get there.
Don't sweat it, but I'm going to get there.
What?
What were you going to see?
Obviously, Dach Cheney, we've got the soundbite company.
He was on Hannity last night.
It's the weakest president in my lifetime.
Yeah, no doubt.
Why?
You got to keep drilling down.
Oh, yeah, okay, he's the weakest foreign policy.
Is it because he's unqualified?
Yeah.
Is it because he thinks America deserves him?
He does.
He has a chip on his shoulder about this country, how he was raised.
It's how he was educated.
It's look when a guy writes in his own book that his first job out of college in a law firm, he thinks he's in enemy territory because he's at a capitalist organization.
It should tell you something.
When a guy tells you he wants single-payer, socialized health care, it should tell you something.
When the guy assumes office and even before he assumes office apologizes for America in several foreign policy speeches, it should tell you something.
And to me, it said a lot.
The Obama doctrine is resulting from, it's based on the fact that he's got a chip on his shoulder about this country from the moment it was founded.
In his mind, and you've heard me say this before, it was unjust.
It was immoral.
It codified the supremacy of whites and the rich and the elites at the expense of minorities, people of color, and the poor.
It was a rigged game from the outset, a system designed to keep the elites elites and the rich rich and everybody else with nothing.
It was a country that grew and expanded and became powerful by virtue of its illegitimacy.
And it grew and expanded by virtue of not liberating the oppressed around the world, but rather going around the world and stealing the resources from other parts of the world and bringing them home and using them as our own.
And of course we could become a superpower if we were going to be thieves.
Now he never used those words, but this is what he believes.
This country superpower status was never truly honestly deserved.
It was and we were a superpower, but we didn't deserve to be because we never or we frequently, what would he say today?
We frequently abandoned our values and we forgot our roots and we behaved in manners of our enemies.
And so now this country has to be brought back down to size because you see to the modern American left America the superpower was not real.
If it was illegitimate, it wasn't deserved, so it's not real.
It's just like they say that the eight years of, well, the 20 years of economic expansion started during the Reagan years, that was a quirk of fate.
That wasn't real.
A real America is all of the misery and inequality and discrimination that existed before that and has now returned.
This is the real America.
This is the new normal.
This is what it is.
America's glory days of the past were simply not real because they derive from illegitimacy and immorality.
And as such, we didn't really deserve it.
So the Obama doctrine is America needs to be cut down to size.
The Obama doctrine is America is not anything exceptional.
America is no better.
America is no different than anywhere else in the world.
And it's a mistake to think that we're better people.
And that's what he thinks people are saying when they talk about American exceptionalism.
I'm convinced, I've heard him talking about it, I don't know how to 10, 20 times, and I am convinced he doesn't have the slightest idea what the term really means.
Like most people, he has a knee-jerk reaction to it.
American exceptionalism, he thinks people are saying, we're better people, and we're not.
See, we had slavery.
We were racists and we were bigots and we discriminated.
No way we're better than anybody else.
We've got a long way to go, in fact, to be better than anybody else.
We've got a lot to make up for.
We have to pay a steep price before we can even get back to the discussion of discussing whether or not we're worthy.
Because that's what it boils down to.
We really aren't worthy.
We didn't deserve all the greatness that happened here.
Because it didn't happen for everybody.
It happened during teeming inequality.
It happened during gross discrimination.
It happened when there was just blatant unfairness everywhere.
So there's no way this country could ever be considered exceptional.
And he doesn't even know what it means.
I'll tell you what it means one more time, at least in my view.
The story of humanity on planet Earth since the beginning of time has been tyranny and bondage.
Most people who have lived did not have very much freedom or liberty.
They did not have the right to own property, and they certainly didn't have a whole lot of economic opportunity.
The vast majority of people who have lived on this planet have had really hard lives, lived under tyranny, authoritarianism, dictatorship, you name it.
There never was a nation before the United States which founded itself and organized itself on the belief that the citizen was the center of the universe.
The free, liberated citizen was the engine.
Every other nation on earth that had been formed, or every other population group, even if it was not a nation with borders, any population group was always dominated by brutal, tyrannical, dictatorial leaders who led by intimidation, punishment, brutality.
The United States came along and was the exception to all of that.
The United States comes along and is founded under the premise that we are all created by God and that we're all created equal and we are all created yearning for freedom, that that is the natural existence of the human spirit.
It had never happened before.
The Constitution of this country was written for the first time in human history to limit the power of its leaders, to limit the power of its government.
It had never happened before.
Maybe Magna Carta got there, but in terms of organizing a nation for the purposes of existing as a nation-state, never had anything like this happened before.
That's what's so remarkable and miraculous.
That's the exception.
American exceptionalism is about the exception to the rule or the exception to the norm.
Not that we're better people, not that we have better DNA, not that we're smarter.
We've had more freedom.
We've had more liberty.
We've had the ability to live our lives according to our desires, not according to the limits placed on us by other human beings.
And we'll be back.
Don't go away.
He doesn't understand that, by the way.
Fears expressed by the host on this program: the result of a daily, relentless, unstoppable pursuit of the truth.
And we find it.
And then we proclaim it.
And it happens to drive some people crazy.
Here's Vice President Cheney last night on the Hannity show Fox News question: the president's given three speeches in three days about the military.
We outed a CIA operative in Afghanistan.
Oh, speaking of what, do you realize?
Let me, I just remember, I got a headline for CNN.
Have you heard about the economic news today?
The first quarter, economic growth was revised.
The original reported number, economic growth, was one-tenth of one percent.
That's the original reported number back in April.
And they have revised it now to a negative number.
U.S. economic growth in the first quarter contracted.
The economy didn't grow at all.
It got smaller.
It shrank.
Would you like me to share with you CNN's headline?
U.S. economy shrinks, but it's not a big deal.
U.S. economy shrinks, but it's not a big deal.
And the reason why is because it was the weather that made it shrink.
It was all of this unseasonably cold weather brought on by global warming that caused there to be a cutback in economic activity or commerce.
So it's really not a big deal.
And it's the same thing with the CIA station chief in Kabul, who's been outed.
All of the drive-bys are reporting it, but they're saying it's not really a big deal.
It was just a faux pas.
Here's Vice.
Well, I'm not going to have time to get his soundbite in, but he was asked by Hannity, okay, we out of the CIA operative, no big deal.
We got the VA scandal, breathtaking in terms of how inappropriate it is for our vets.
We also have America.
Is it in decline in terms of perception, perception around the world?
And I'll let you hear what former Vice President Cheney replied when we get back.
He basically says that this is the weakest president in his lifetime.
And he is being charitable when he says that.
Here's the Dick Cheney answer to the question.
We outed a CIA operative in Afghanistan, VA scandal that's heartbreaking, breathtaking in terms of how inappropriate it is for the vets, and we have America.
Is it in decline in terms of perception around the world?
I think the perception around the world is increasingly negative, but I think the main focus is on our president.
He's a very, very weak president, maybe the weakest, certainly, in my lifetime.
And I know from my own experience on a recent trip through the Middle East, spending several days talking with folks I've dealt with all the way back to Desert Storm, they all are absolutely convinced that the American capacity to lead and to influence events in that part of the world has been dramatically reduced by this president.
Right.
And something I would like to add to that, this is not accidental, folk.
This is not due, as some would want you to believe, even on our side, to incompetence and not being prepared for the job.
I mean, clearly there's some of that, but this is not coincidental or accidental or just happening.
If you have the courage to properly identify the president's view of this country and then put him in the open office, free reign to do whatever he wants to do, if he believes this country is whatever term you want to use, paper tiger, unjust, immoral, whatever.
If he thinks this country needs to be taught a lesson or two, then he's going to see to it that that happens.
All these people around the world see somebody they make is indecisive.
American capacity to lead to influence events, say in the Middle East or anywhere else, been dramatically reduced by this president.
Exactly.
On purpose.
Doesn't think that we have any legitimacy.
Who are we?
When he was once asked many times, actually, about American exceptionalism, well, of course I believe in American exceptionalism, but I'm sure the people in the U.K. think that they're exceptional.
And I think the people in France think they're exceptional, too.
And this is the way he swats it away as being meaningless.
Well, everybody thinks they're cool, but there's nothing special about us.
He probably actively believes, who are we to tell anybody in the world what to do?
And you might be of the same mindset in a way.
I mean, look at the reaction we got to the Bring Back Our Girls hashtag.
A lot of people are called here.
It's none of our business.
What in the hell, Rush?
What are we supposed to do?
Send troops everywhere?
No.
But you see, it boils down to leadership.
Precisely because of our exceptionalism, precisely because we, the United States, are the exception in humanity.
We have thus been thrust into a role of leadership where liberty and freedom are concerned.
And fighting for it everywhere also buttresses it here.
We never have been isolationists.
It has always been a tenant.
I mean, this really is the first, maybe Woodrow Wilson will be the first, but in our lifetimes, this really is the first president who thinks that that's all it's a hogwash.
Freedom and liberty, let's accept anybody.
It's not our job.
It has no effect on our freedom, what's happening elsewhere in the world.
And who are we?
Who are we?
In Obama's worldview, and not just his, but a lot of leftists, we're dictators ourselves.
We dictate.
I can't tell you the number of times I've heard leftists and Democrats criticize this country for imposing freedom on other people, imposing our way of life.
Who are we to impose our way of life?
See, I've never thought freedom is an imposition.
I've always thought of freedom as liberation.
And I've always thought that the United States proudly occupied the leadership role of freedom and liberty throughout the world.
Stood for it, defended it.
And in fact, why do you think the rest of the world wants to live here?
Well, now it might be our welfare state, but back in the old days, that wasn't part of the equation.
It was liberty and freedom.
It was opportunity.
It was to escape tyranny, bondage, whatever authoritarian circumstances people face.
They wanted to come here, and they wanted to become Americans.
They were proud to come here and learn English and become Americans.
They wanted to be part of what was happening here.
And when they did, they were very proud.
That assimilation is something that's long since ceased to occur throughout much of immigration.
It's not totally abandoned, but in much, particularly the illegal immigration, assimilation is not even a factor.
It's not even something we require anymore.
But the president, the rest of the world looks, he's content to let people, you know, whatever they want to do, wherever.
It's not our job.
It's not our job.
We don't have the moral authority to tell anybody what to do, what not to do.
That's his view.
We just don't have that.
We've never deserved it.
We never earned it.
The fact that we were pretending to be more moral and superior to all these countries around the world, we never had that right.
That's the Obama doctrine.
And we are weak, perceived weak, because we simply are not an ally anymore when you get down to brass tags.
Let me grab a quick phone call before we big concussion summit today at the White House.
Obama used his power of convening.
He actually referred to his convening power to bring in 200 people to discuss concussions in American sports.
See, he really cares.
He really cares.
There's always great intentions.
He wants to save people, protect people, but then he doesn't when it comes to bordering buddhazee.
No, he doesn't think we have the authority to tell countries what to do.
We don't have the moral authority to stand up for what we believe in.
It really comes down to that.
He does not believe we have the moral authority to stand up around the world for what we believe in because what we believe in is nothing special.
Don't doubt me on this.
But he relishes the authority to tell you and me what to do, and his wife relishes the authority to set the national menu.
And don't think for a minute that's what this healthy food business isn't about.
It's not about making sure your kid doesn't eat potatoes and stuff.
It's about the power to set the menu.
So let's see.
See, we're not, let's go to number five.
This is Jerry in Tracy, California.
Are you still there, Jerry?
Great to have you here.
Hi.
Oh, good morning.
Thank you.
Say, I'd like to submit that the domestic side, at least, of the Obama doctrine is if it's not broken, fix it till it is.
And I can give a perfect example of that from the VA.
I had an in-law recently work there trying to clean up their two-year backlog of paperwork.
There was a, in private practice, there's a one-step to go from one procedure to the next.
The VA had seven steps.
While he was working, cleaning this up, the bureaucrats in Washington decided seven steps wasn't good enough and went to 21 steps.
Well, you know, the VA, not really, well, everybody knows what's going wrong with the VA.
The Obama doctrine in terms of foreign policy would not include the VA, but still, that's what you wanted to talk about, so that's okay.
As far as the VA goes, there's a formula out there that, once again, doesn't solve anything, but it makes people feel better, and it makes people feel like they've done something, and it makes them feel like they've taken a step to fix something.
And now everybody's getting on this bandwagon of firing Shinseki.
Well, fine and dandy, go ahead and fire Shinseki, but that's not the solution to this.
Shinseki's just doing this idea that it's just a formula.
Okay, somebody heads got to roll, and so Obama is going to demonstrate that he is on the case, going to fire Shinseki if he does.
And we're going to look at the firing of Shinseki as though it's something substantive that has happened.
It's going to change what's going on in the VA.
And it isn't.
It's a made-to-order process set up for politicians to use to fool everybody into thinking they've done something.
Now, Shinseki may well deserve to be fired, but that's just the beginning.
That doesn't do one thing toward rectifying what's going wrong.
And it doesn't even get to the root of the problem.
The root of the problem goes all the way to the buck.
Where does the buck stop?
Buck stops in the Oval Office.
Who said that?
Terry Truman, Harry Truman.
So this is, you know, firing Shinseki is just a stopgap symbolic measure designed to make people think that they've done something good, that they're making a difference, so to speak.
And I'm not defending Shinseki.
Don't misunderstand.
I just don't think it's going to matter if that's all you do.
We'll be back.
Don't go away.
Back to the audio sandbites, the president and the concussion summit today.
Is anything more worthless Than a concussion summit at the White House convened by the president in the big scheme of things.
Is this the kind of thing that actually ought to be going on at the White House?
Well, it is on the same level of a hashtag when you get right down to it.
Mr. Limbo, are you saying that you don't care about the safety of our children and our citizens and hurting their heads while they play violence?
No, I'm not saying at all, Mr. Castrati.
I'm saying that this is worthless.
This is not how anything's going to happen.
A concussion summit?
If football causes concussions and you want to eliminate concussions, what are you going to have to do?
You're going to have to eliminate the way football is played, pure and simple.
If there were a helmet that prevented concussions, it would be on the market, and whoever made it would be extremely wealthy and popular.
But there isn't.
If there are a way of playing the game as it's played today that would eliminate concussions, somebody would have implemented it.
So this is a feel-good exercise, and it's really targeted at the low-information voters.
It is a counter to all of the other negative Obama news out there, and it's supposed to.
He really cares.
See, he's focused on us.
He really cares about people.
And it shores up the good intentions and the desire to protect people and all this.
But it's outside of that, I mean, in terms of the genuine stated objective.
In fact, I don't even know what the stated objective is.
It's like, how many job summits has Obama had?
And where's the evidence they matter?
And how many other summits on various aspects of the economy has Obama convened?
And where's the evidence that they matter?
And I'm the mayor of Ridelville.
And it's just, to me, it's a frustrating thing that so much symbolism counts for substance today.
And symbolism is just that.
It isn't anything substantive.
Symbolism over substance.
Image, buzz, and PR over reality.
But that's where we are.
And people that are able to pull that off get lots of applause and love and respect, and they're thought to be really cool and really helping.
And wow.
So let's listen.
Here's the first of three bites.
Before the awareness was out there, when I was young and played football briefly, there were a couple times where I'm sure that that bringing sensation in my head and the need to sit down for a while might have been a mild concussion.
And at the time, you didn't think anything of it.
Oh, I won't get any argument here that he's had some brain injury.
But isn't this classic?
So you convene a concussion seminar, summit, and you start off by saying, hey, I've had them.
I'm sure, man, I had my bell rung back when I was out there playing the rough, tough, really masculine game of football.
This from a guy who throws baseballs in mom jeans that can't even cover 60 feet.
So here is Obama describing the power that he has to even make this summit happen.
Some people's brains may be more vulnerable to trauma than others are.
We don't know that yet, but there may be some evidence that is worth exploring.
So with all these questions swirling around, as a parent and as a fan, and in discussions with a lot of other parents and fans who happen to be in this White House, we decided, why not use our convening power to help find some more answers?
Man, is this really good?
Folks, the future is so wonderful.
Look at some people's brains may be more vulnerable to trauma than others.
We don't know that yet, but we're still going to convene the summit to find out.
Is this not great?
I mean, all these people that play organized sports can rest easy now.
They have full confidence.
Keep going because in Washington, they're going to fix the concussion problem.
I just think it's wonderful.
I guess it's great.
Why don't they tackle every problem this way?
This is so cool.
You know what?
By the end of the day, the concussion problem is going to be solved.
Here, one more bite.
What today's about.
It's to give parents the information they need to help their kids compete safely.
Let's keep encouraging our kids to get out there and play sports that they love and doing it the right way.
The right way.
That's not a job just for parents, but it's a job for all of us, and that's why public-private partnerships like these are important.
Exactly right.
In a few minutes, I know that many of you are going to take this discussion a step further with this panel of experts, moderated by Pam Oliver.
We have a panel of experts.
We'll have people break into groups, go to various corners of the room, having their summit meetings, reporting back to the president at 5 o'clock, and no more concussions.
And we're going to tell parents how to do it the right way.
We're going to have a government-parent partnership to wipe out concussion.
is so cool this is just this is so so Man, I just think it's so great.
I love this.
Will Mrs. Clinton be appearing at the concussion summit?
She had one, you know, it's very bad.
I wonder, folks, what Vladimir Putin reaction when he sees videotape of the president convening the concussion summit.
▲
Export Selection