Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Every day at Adult Christmas, it's the anniversary date of the EIB network.
This is number 26 today.
Which means that we are starting our 27th year.
It's unreal.
Live from the Southern Command in Sunny, South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
Hey.
Look, a lot of people have done things longer than 27 years.
Don't misunderstand.
But in this business.
And it doesn't happen very often.
The nature of the beast.
At no time when I was young and climbing the ladder of success that I ever think I would be doing the same thing for 27 years at the same place.
Might have been doing the same thing.
I thought I'd get fired 25 times in the process.
As it was, I was fired eight times.
But I haven't been fired in the last 27 years or six.
Well, no, I haven't fired the last 30.
And now it's kind of hard now because I would have to have to fire myself.
So it's open line Friday.
Here's the number, 800 282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the email address, L Rushbow at EIBNet.com.
I meant to get the phone calls in the last hour and I didn't, so I'll try to make up for that in this hour.
But now I want to go back.
We always on anniversary day, we go back to the Grooveyard of Forgotten Favorites, try to play some highlights in previous programs.
I want to go back to my appearance, my first appearance on Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.
At the time he was uh well he always was one of my idols and a uh a hero of mine.
I'm very fortunate not only to get to meet him, but become an acquaintance.
I'm a uh a social friend.
It's a thrill.
But I was nervous as I could be when he asked me on nightline.
I mean, I had only been doing the program for four years, and he invited me.
Well, we'd we'd gotten to know each other a little bit before this, but not as much as obviously we wouldn't as time went on, but I was invited because I was it.
I mean, I was I was even in 1992, this was the only program in national media that was conservative.
I don't even think the uh process of guest hosts getting their own shows had started yet.
I think that had I'm not sure.
I that might have happened by 1992, I'm not sure, but it was it was close.
If it wasn't, it was soon thereafter.
So I'm nervous.
I'm thinking, do I really and the same same manner when I was first invited by Ted Coppel to be on Nightline to debate Al Gore on global warming.
But I was it because I was the only recognizable national conservative voice.
It was snerdleys is still are.
So anyway, it was a wide-ranging interview.
And and you should know that that Buckley was was uh very respectful, found me amusing, uh, and well, amusing, I entertained him.
He he he was he was you know, he he's from this button-down uh button-down world and so forth, and I'm just kind of uh my pedigree's totally different than his.
And so he was, he was, but he was he was never, never did he act superior or uh aloof, any of those kind of things.
He was he was he was a good guy to me.
But I was nervous as I could be.
Because I was, you know, do I really deserve this?
Am I qualified to be on the show?
I mean, I'd watch these firing line debates uh growing up, I mean, this was William F. Buckley.
And I'm saying, there's no way I'm I may not even understand the questions this guy's gonna ask me.
I mean, I'm I'm not even in his league, was my attitude.
But I was so honored to be, I couldn't say no.
I could I I couldn't turn it down.
So I did it, and we taped it at his masonette at uh 73rd and Park Avenue.
You know what a Masonette is?
It is a it's an apartment or condo on the first floor with entrances specifically to your apartment off the street.
I didn't know what a mason until I started reading gossip columns in New York about his masonette.
I said, What the hell's a mason?
How in the world I looked it up and that's what it is.
You can't be, in fact, if you live on a second or 23rd, you can't have a masonet.
Got to be on a ground floor.
So we taped it in there.
I in fact I arrived, and he's playing the harpsichord.
He loved Johann Sebastian Bach.
And I showed up, I went on the uh in on the 73rd Street side.
That was the friend's entrance.
Park Avenue is where you had to deal with all the staff.
So I went in, his driver met me, and I walked in, and right inside the door in that hallway, he's playing the harpsichord while the firing lane crew is setting up in the library, so forth.
Now, my first trip to the library before this, I had been to his Masonette before.
I was invited to an editor's dinner, a National Review editor's dinner, which I guess was once a month at his Masonette.
It was a big place.
And it was it was well, it was beautiful.
And I remember all the editors were there.
I drove around the block twice to build up courage to go in.
Finally walked in.
They usher me in there, and there's all these editors at National Review, and I'm I'm just I'm kind of in awe.
I'm a gog.
And uh Buckley just warm, stands up, welcomes me in, asks me what I would like to drink, and I said, uh I think I said, look up uh Crown Royal and Diet Coke, something like that, maybe a straight diet.
And he brought it to me and I tasted it, and it honest to God, folks, that tasted like have you ever have you ever your mother ever gave you mineral oil?
It tasted and seemed like had the consistency of mineral oil, and I didn't say anything.
It looked like Diet Coke.
I'm thinking, my God, what is this?
It wasn't flat diet coke.
There was something in there besides diet coke.
So then his wife Pat has always made her grand in France after everybody's a sweeping down the giant main staircase.
She comes in, she says hello, and asked me what I'm drinking.
And and I says, Diet Coke.
She said, May I sip it?
So sure.
She tasted it.
What the hell is this, Bill?
And took it over there and brought me back a Diet Coke.
I still don't know what was in it.
So anyway, I show up for the firing line interview, and he's playing the harpsichord, and we finally go into the library and sit down and start the thing.
We have three sound bites from it.
And I want to play them to you because it's a classic illustration of being on the cutting edge of societal evolution.
And I also wanted you to hear it because I'm nervous as I can be, and I'm asking myself if I have any business being here.
I've only been doing this program four years.
Have I earned this yet?
I'm asking myself.
And at the time, women in the military, women in combat was one of the hot button issues.
The idea of putting a woman at one end of a rifle with a bayonet, and saying, go ahead, and trot along with everybody else, offends me, and I kind of resist uh the notion that I ought to be responsible for externalizing the reasons why I feel them and certain things.
Stop the tape a minute.
Stop the let me translate this for you.
Because I some people externalizing the reason.
What do he said?
Put this back to the top.
He said the idea of putting a woman, a woman at one end of a rifle, a bayonet, and saying charge whatever offends me.
I don't think women should be doing that.
And I resist the notion that I ought to have to explain why.
That's what he means when he says I resist the notion that I ought to be responsible for externalizing the reasons I feel.
I don't have to tell anybody.
I just think it's odd.
I don't believe in it, and I resist this idea that they didn't make me explain it.
He said certain things, he goes on, he says certain things that I ought to be responsible for externalizing the reasons why I feel them, and certain things I think I ought to be entitled to feel without being committed to formula, meaning something I just know is wrong, and you didn't you I shouldn't have to tell you.
We should all know it's wrong, is what he was saying.
So here's the question again from the top.
The idea of putting a woman at one end of a rifle with a bayonet and saying, go ahead and and charge along with everybody else offends me, and I kind of resist uh the notion that I ought to be responsible for externalizing the reasons why I feel them, and certain things I think I ought to be entitled to feel without being committed to uh formulating.
The very fact that you feel that improves that you are a sexist.
And it proves that you're born that way.
And it proves that uh you must undergo deep uh retraining uh and sensitivity counseling in order to I mean we're sending professors now to sensitivity training because they do not use the term Native American as opposed to Indian.
So I was trying to sound like him, you know.
So and the next one, this is this is uncanny, folks.
Listen to this.
This cockamamy idea now that we've got to get rid of uh surnames of uh sports teams because they somehow all of a sudden, after all these years have become offensive like chasing the Indians out of dogmouth.
Yes.
Yes.
So I'm saying the Washington Redskins football team is offensive, and you gotta get rid of the term Redskins and and so forth, that all of a sudden uh can't do the tomahawk chop.
Can't do this as a fan in Atlanta Braves baseball game without supposedly offending Native Americans.
Right there it was, 1992.
A forerunner of what was to come told you, even mentioning the Washington Redskins, ladies and gentlemen.
And here's the warning.
Um this did this final exchange.
Uh I tell him that I that I worry that all of what's going on is part of a larger reprogramming of American youth.
Here it is.
That is fanatical, isn't it?
Yes.
I mean, the attempt to redefine Christopher Columbus as the reason for all evil in the Western world.
And I always say to people, and that's what multiculturalism is all about, Bill, and I'm troubled by these are American kids that are being reprogrammed.
Stop and think of this.
What is multiculturalism?
It is teaching people that which they fled in order to come here to find prosperity, a better life, what have you.
And I think multiculturalism is a tool of revenge used by those who failed.
It's an invitation to retribalization.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And to try to uh convince kids as they're growing up they have no chance in this country.
These are American kids, and they're being uh educated in ways that are not going to prepare them to access the opportunities that exist here.
It's uh invitation to re-tribalization.
Multiculturalism.
Anyway, those are the bites from firing line.
The brief timeout now, and your telephone calls are next.
So sit tight, back with more after this.
Half my brain tied behind my back, just to make it fair.
We're always interested.
Fairness and equality here at the EIB network.
Here's uh here's here's Bob.
Little River, South Carolina, as we start on the phones.
Great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
Uh listen, long-term uh listener, been with you since 1989.
I just want to say thank you for all that you've done.
Well, thank you, sir, very much.
We really appreciate it.
Here's my question.
Why hasn't there been any reporting or discussion?
If it wasn't for the the success of the iron domes knocking out thousands of the Hamas uh rockets that have been destined only for the civilians in Israel.
Not military targets, but civilians.
Right.
If not for that success, that the civil civilian death toll would be many more times worse than that of the Palestinians.
Because the media will not permit, the regime will not permit any news coverage of Hamas or the Palestinians as aggressors.
And it's also it's not fair that Israel has this capability and that Hamas doesn't.
But Israeli successes are not going to be reported.
Israelis' successes are going to be re-characterized as brutalities.
And uh certainly not defensive measures and so forth.
I mean, I know your your point's a great one.
It's that Hamas is launching a lot of rockets aimed right at the Israeli civilian population.
There's no question, and yet all we hear is the Israelis have got to stop killing Hamas children.
When it's it's Hamas putting them in the targets.
And I don't folks, this is another one of these things, one of these topics where nothing makes any sense.
Everybody, I I don't know how you can be alive and and a thoughtful, engaged person, particularly if you're a journalist.
I don't know how you do not know what Hamas is doing.
There have been pictures.
If these journalists can't read, there are pictures of the rockets in Palestinian schools and hospitals.
There is no question that this is happening.
And yet the reporting continues that the Israelis are killing children and it's got to stop.
It's I don't know, folks, it's it's obviously it's on purpose.
It's there's more than willful deceit.
Uh going going on here.
And it would be one thing if if if we knew that the people reporting this were bought and paid for, Palestinian operatives or PR.
But the people that are telling this have this aura of objectivity about them because they are called journalists.
And that's what makes this really seedy and really offensive is that the people who are doing all of this condemning are journalists going out and getting friendly Palestinian or Hamas spokesmen.
And then when the Israelis come on and explain what's really happening, they are treated rudely with meanness, a lack of respect.
They uh are demanded, they are commanded to explain why they continue to kill children.
And I have to think that the people asking the questions have to know that they're not trying to do it.
When on the other hand, it's Hamas who is targeting children.
It's not the first time.
I've I've felt this way, this incredulity, I can't tell you how many times.
Uh the Republicans starving children in in 1995, the school lunch cuts that never were.
There weren't any school lunch program cuts.
But every day it was the Republicans are starving kids.
Every the media reporting this.
They knew there was no such thing going on.
But then there's the low information crowd.
There's always been the low information crowd.
And to the low information crowd, journalists are fair and objective and unbiased.
Or if a journalist is biased and unfair, and you agree with the journalist, then you support the journalist being unfair and biased.
And you're glad the journalist is on your team.
This this doesn't, I mean, this goes beyond left versus right.
This is this is simply right and wrong, true and false.
And it seems like more and more establishment type people stand up for what's false, stand up for what everybody knows is lies, and keep perpetuating it as though it's the truth.
Pull your hair out.
Gene In uh in Harvard, Illinois, your next open line Friday.
Welcome to the program.
Hi.
Congratulations on 26th anniversary day.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
Thank you so much.
I'd like to challenge your terminology.
Obama is using the illegal alien children as human shields to promote himself and his amnesty policy from all criticism to protect them from all criticism.
And we can't attack amnesty without being seen as hurting those children.
Secondly, he's also the human trafficker in chief.
He wants to bring them in by the airplane load, not in the smaller groups the coyotes use.
And who's placing them in families?
Is it those who've been who have redefined what families are?
These children are ripe for exploitation.
Children are ripe for Oh, yes.
No question about it.
And you are right in your first claim that that uh Obama's hiding behind their human shields.
Their children.
In fact, I I just watched a show on Fox not long ago, and the question was, you know, I don't know how you Republicans are gonna win, because it seems like what you're saying is that you don't want to take care of children, and furthermore, you want to deport a bunch of children.
Would you tell me how that is a winning political idea?
And that's ex- You're exactly right.
That's that's why they're doing this.
It's open line Friday, Rush Limbaugh anniversary day, number 26 today.
Uh, folks, just to show you, we just had a caller.
We just had a caller who wanted to know about the uh, you know, why was there no coverage on the iron dome?
The Israeli Iron Dome that's protecting their children from these attacks by Hamas.
And I said one of the reasons why it's not fair that Israel is the one who has the iron dome, and they haven't shared the iron dome with the Palestinians and Hamas.
Lo and behold.
A story from today in the Washington Times.
I was just sent this story.
US UN condemns Israel and the United States for not sharing Iron Dome with Hamas.
Good.
Folks, I my instincts some days even amaze me.
Nations slammed Israel for possibly committing war crimes in its fight against Hamas, and then backed that accusation by suggesting the Jewish state ought to be sharing its iron dome defensive technology with the very terror group it's fighting.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay said to members of the media at an emergency meeting of the UN Human Rights Council that Israel was falling short in its duty to protect citizens in the Gaza Strip from getting killed by its rockets by not sharing its technology.
Is that not cocked?
This is a war.
We're in a war, and the Israelis are being condemned for not sharing their protective dome.
So that the Palestinians can be protected from Israeli rockets.
That's exactly how this works.
If you understand, I don't mean this to sound condescending.
Please, never.
I never mean to sound that way.
What the way to to not go insane trying to make sense out of this?
You know, how in the world could Israel be the bad guy?
How in the world can this be?
The only democratic country in the Middle East, a U.S. ally, ever since its founding, since Israel's founding.
How can it be?
How can Israel end up being the bad guy?
Obama makes it look like the bad guy.
John Kerry makes him look like the bad guy, which makes it look like they agree with Hamas and the Palestinians, everybody under Arab states that Israel's a bad guy.
How can Israel be the bad guy?
They're the ones under assault.
They're the ones being attacked.
Israel doesn't put kids on its bombs, send them into Gaza Strip.
Palestinians do that.
How in the world is Israel the bad guy?
Do you understand that?
In the leftist perverted worldview, Israel is the bad guy because they're the they're the more powerful, and they are a majority, and they're more advanced.
And fair.
It just isn't fair.
I mean, if Israel has an iron dome, they should share that.
They should share it.
Palestinians are a poor underdeveloped minority.
They're victims.
And the Israelis are the brutes and the bullies.
It's no more complicated than that.
Well, it is, but I mean that's a simple way of understanding it.
Now, President Obama has done something that's never been done.
President Obama has ordered the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta to bring two Americans suffering from the Ebola virus into America.
We are sending a specially equipped Gulf Stream III.
It's an air ambulance.
It is equipped to handle highly contagious patients, keep them shielded and protected from attending medical staff and the flight crew.
The jet took off yesterday, and it's going, I think to Liberia.
It's going to pick up a couple of Americans who have Ebola and bring them back to the United States.
There has never been a case of Ebola within the United States borders.
A lot of people are asking why are we doing this?
Why don't we send American medical personnel to where these two Americans are and treat them in a quarantine situation somewhere closer to where they are?
Why are we bringing them here?
This has never happened.
Folks, this disease, this disease spreads very easily.
Two doctors treating Ebola patients, decked out in full hazmat gear in Sierra Leone and uh I think Liberia have died.
Two doctors, one was 39 years old, wearing full hazmat gear.
Now, Ebola is spread most commonly by something called the fruit bat.
But once somebody gets the the way the virus makes sure that it gets spread, and a virus is just a life form, and life forms want to stay alive.
They want to keep living, they want to populate.
It's the natural order of things.
Life forms propagate, promulgate.
The way Ebola does it is via the blood.
What eventually happens, the first couple of weeks with Ebola, you think you have the flu.
Or if you are in Africa, you might think you have malaria.
But the point is it's not immediately detectable, except if you go to the doctor the first couple of days you think something's wrong.
Now, most people, when they get the flu, don't go to the doctor.
Think it's the flu, and they just take it easy for a while.
After two weeks, other symptoms emerge, and the other symptoms include organ failure, because the Ebola virus permeates veins and arteries, so it gets it gets into organs, it causes bleeding, internal and external bleeding, and that's how the virus spreads itself.
All you have to do is come in contact with any bodily fluid.
It's not contagious.
Well, I shouldn't say this.
I was gonna say sneezing and so forth.
That may not be true.
But it's a primarily blood and bodily fluid spread disease, and there is plenty of it with Ebola.
It's it's the I don't know how it gets inside a hazmat suit, but it did.
That's my point.
It killed a doctor in a full hazmat suit.
I don't know how it got it.
The doctor had to make some kind of a mistake.
But it just means mistakes can be made, even with full hazmat gear, you can get this virus.
It's not, it's not hard to get once you are around somebody who has it.
So I can't think of a reason why anybody would want to bring into this country people suffering from it.
Now, I understand the compassion and they're Americans and so forth.
Is that why you think the president decided to do it?
Because it's that, hey, they're Americans.
We don't want to leave them in a part of the world where they may not get the best treatment.
For them and their family's sake, we're going to bring them here and treat them.
It's the this well, then what is if that's not the reason, what's the reason.
Okay.
Okay.
So the answer that I just received from the official program observer is that every good crisis deserves a Democrat president.
So you're saying that if there is Ebola in the world, my as well be here so Obama can strut his stuff.
Well, there's only one problem with that.
There is no cure for this disease.
There's nothing Obama or anybody else can do to save these kids.
The fatality rate is 50 to 90 percent.
The number of this outbreak, 60 percent of those diagnosed have died.
There's a f well, no, because it's of so far, 60 percent have died.
Those still sick.
No, the failure rate is closer to the fatal rate, fatality rate closer to 90 percent.
I mean, this there's no there's no cure.
There's no treatment.
All you can do is keep someone hydrated.
That and that's literally all you can do.
But once once the internal bleeding starts, and that's that's what the organ failure, there's nothing anybody can do.
Well, that's an awful cynical view you've got that if there's going to be a crisis, it may as well be here so that Obama and the Democrat Party can lead the compassion train in if not curing it.
Rahm Emanuel crisis is uh no crisis too great to waste.
All right, so we're gonna import crisis.
But well, uh if if if that's what you think, if you think that uh because Rahman Manuel said that a crisis, no crisis is too great to waste, and that they're somehow political.
I you've learned that from me.
I know you have, because I have properly said that every event that attracts mass attention is going to be converted into advancing a Democrat Party agenda, right?
Every time we every time we okay, so every time we give them the benefit of the doubt, we're proven wrong.
So how about this?
How about just as it's not fair that the Israelis are the only ones that have the iron dome?
Could it be that, hey, it's not fair that Ebola has not broken out in America, and it does in Africa and all these other poor countries.
Not fair.
Could that you can't possibly believe that they would import two cases of Ebola just for that reason.
Anyway, that is happening, and I just cutting edge, I'm gonna tell you there are gonna be people questioning why.
And the people who question why are gonna be tagged as heartless, cold, mean-spirited, uncaring, whatever.
And I think just the the very act of bringing those to America, that is where the credit and the advancement of the Democrat agenda will be attached, with just the act bringing them here.
But I've got to take a timeout now, folks.
I want you to sit tight, don't go away, we'll be right back.
Back to the phones we go on open line Friday, and this is Anastasia in New Oxford, Pennsylvania, and she is ten years old.
Anastasia, thank you for calling.
Great to have you on the program today.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
So it's your turn.
I just wanted to talk about how you inspired me to love history.
And I read both of your books, and that it was pretty amazing how it was so it felt so realistic, but yet I still wanted to go back in time.
Well, that's that is so sweet.
Anastasia, are your parents liberal Democrats?
They're independent.
I wondered why you were whispering.
But that's very sweet of you to say.
I can't tell you how much it means to me because you you're you're ten and your age group is exactly who those books were written for.
And you have nailed why.
It's because we take you right to the event via the time travel, and you're part of it.
So try to make it exciting and interesting and also truthful.
I mean, that's that's the real point of the books.
Because the it it could be that as you go through school, you're gonna hear different versions of history than what you read in my books.
And I I want you to know that the books that I have written that you have read, and the the depictions of history there, written for your age group are truthful.
There was that's exactly why I did it, is so that you could learn who the people were that made this country possible.
You're only 10 years old now, and and I my hope is I love America and I want everybody to.
I wish everybody did.
And it's a special place.
It's unique for really positive good reasons, and I want people to grow up knowing them.
I want people, young people like you to grow up loving this country and understanding why you do.
And I would I want you to grow up understanding why and how this country happened and and what it took and how hard it was, and how committed to it the people who made it possible were because they were really tough and committed people, and they faced hardships that you and I, Anastasia, do not know in our lives.
They faced hardships that you and I will never have, and they believed in it so much that they sacrificed everything they had to make it happen.
And it has endured for over 230 years for reasons, and that's why I'm so moved when somebody your age who reads the book calls and tells me that they got it and they liked it.
You have you have made my day, and I cannot thank you enough.
Do you have do you have the uh audio versions of the book by any chance, or just the actual books themselves?
Just the actual books themselves.
Well, I would like to send you the audio version of both.
I recorded them.
It's they're on CDs, so you can listen to them either in your car with your with your parents or uh in where in your private time, wherever you happen to be.
And I read them, and it's every word.
They're not abridged, but it's a different way, it's a new way to to to uh uh read the books again and and listen to them uh as read by me, the author.
So if you would hang on, I'll need to get an address where I can send those to you after we hang up here.
But I uh I you've got me kind of um I don't know, I'm I'm just I'm kind of nervous here talking to you because I can't tell you how much and how much I appreciate the fact that you like them.
It's such a such a great thing.
You remade my day.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Now don't hang up because Mr. Snerdley, the nice man who answered the phone when you called.
Well, here you uh pick up the phone and get your address so we can send you the audio Version.
That's Anastasia.
And she's from New Oxford, Pennsylvania.
And she's a fan of the Rush Revere Time Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans, American History series.
Yeah, that's great.
That's good.
Be back in just a second.
Just got a couple of sound bites from our old friend, Democrat Congressman from Illinois, Luis Gutieris, saying the Republicans hate Hispanics and hate children, all because of the vote they are taking this week on immigration and what's happening at the border.
Self-explanatory.
We have that coming up.
And much more as we forge on today on Open Line Friday.