Our last caller, the recovering liberal, asked me a great question.
It enables me to formulate an answer I have been trying to come up with for a couple of days now.
So sternly, that call was exactly what Open Line Friday or any other day is all about.
The real purpose of callers, and that's to make the host look good.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday!
None of them, Donald Trump wingo there.
Actually, he probably is mimicking me when you get right down to everything.
But nevertheless, great to be back here on Open Line Friday, Rush Limbaugh at 800-282-2882.
And the email address is lrushbo at EIBnet.com.
So our last caller, the recovering liberal Democrat from the state of Washington, he said it saddens him.
It depresses him to see all this anger on the liberal side, even after they win.
You know, we've been talking about that all week.
And it's not enough to just chalk it up to the fact that they are the new totalitarians.
It's not enough to say that even after you lose, you will be made to love.
The question is, why are they so angry?
Even after they're winning everything, why aren't they ever happy?
They win here, they win there, and they're never happy.
And it's never the solution.
The solution is never the solution.
It's always the beginning of something new.
There's something always got them upset, angry, unhappy, miserable, or what have you.
And I think the answer is staring us right in the face.
And to give you the answer, let me come up with here the specific example that our caller used.
You have a small town in his home state of Washington.
You've got gay marriage has become the law of the land by popular vote.
54 to 46.
And the key number is the 46.
46 oppose.
And so the winning side looks at the 46 and they're mad.
They're ticked off.
What do you mean?
46% disapprove?
And they look at that 46 as not victory.
Now, the totalitarian example is that because they're totalitarians or because they have a totalitarian mindset, it's not enough that they win.
You have to be converted to their side, and you must love what they want.
You must love what they support.
And until you do, you are going to pay the price as though you are continuing in opposition.
I think therein lies the answer.
Simple question.
Take whatever the issue is on the left, take the Confederate flag, gay marriage, you name it.
Whatever they're winning, they're still angry as hell.
Why?
You know what the answer is?
I think they know that there is significant opposition and that they really aren't winning.
I mean, they're winning because courts and everything but popular vote is securing the victory.
And so they know the victory, or they think it could be flimsy.
So in order to secure it, they must continue.
They have to use degrees of force, intimidation, bullying in order to win.
But then to maintain the victory, because they're cognizant of so much ongoing opposition, they have to continue the intimidation and bullying even after the win just to secure it.
Because I don't think they ultimately, the end of the day, have the confidence that let me give you an analogy.
Let's take the last Super Bowl.
Patriots, Seahawks.
You know how the game ended?
A last play, for all intents and purposes, interception, when it looked like the Patriots were going to go down and defeat again in the Super Bowl, fail to get the next ring.
And then the Seahawks call that odd play.
They throw a pass and the one-yard line's intercepted.
Imagine if Bill Belichick and Tom Brady said, you know what, we really don't believe this.
We want to keep playing this game.
We're going to play this game tomorrow.
We're going to play it next Tuesday and we're going to beat you.
And if we don't beat you, then it's not legitimate.
Imagine not having a post-game celebration because we really don't believe it.
It didn't really happen legitimately.
It wasn't legitimate, but stupid team we played made a bum call.
We didn't win this game.
We're running away to losing it.
Maybe not the best analogy.
My point is, psychologically or attitudinally, since they know they had to overcome significant opposition and they couldn't do it, they literally could not do it within the realm of public opinion.
They had outside help.
That in order to secure the victory, they have to continue the same behavior to intimidate and bully the opposition into shutting up.
Or maybe that's too complicated.
It could just well be that the totalitarian psychology example is the sole explanation for it.
But I do think it goes, I think it goes deeper.
I think it's an awareness that they remain in the minority numerically and therefore they fear that the victory is fleeting or temporary.
And until they are able to bludgeon everybody into supporting and acknowledging support, then the fight is never over.
And of course, the fight will never be over if the definition of victory is everybody agrees and everybody loves them.
And you can see Ferguson, Missouri, you can see it play out.
Look at what's happening at Ferguson, Missouri.
We had the story earlier this week.
There are ongoing efforts to throw out the grand jury proceedings.
Now, this is a case where they lost and they refuse to accept defeat.
So they are bludgeoning and intimidating and so far using the court system to try to have the grand jury results thrown out because they want the hands-up, don't shoot meme to be what everybody thinks happened in St. Louis or in Ferguson with the gentle giant.
In that case, they're trying to rewrite history and bludgeon everybody into accepting a series of lies or falsehoods.
And they're not quitting.
They're not giving up on it.
It's just a realization.
It's a frustration being in the minority, not liking it, and trying to do whatever it takes to feel like they are in the majority when they really aren't.
That's my two cents.
John Lewis was just on CNN.
Breanna Keillor, noted Clinton support, I'm sorry, CNN reporter, was interviewing John Lewis about the Confederate flag coming down in what?
What?
Well, she is, but she's a CNN reporter, too.
Anyway, she was talking to John Lewis.
who came to fame, of course, about the Confederate flag coming down in South Carolina.
And Breanna Keillor said, you were the only living speaker from the 1963 march on Washington.
You fought for civil rights.
You continue to do so.
How did you feel, Congressman Lewis, watching the flag come down today?
What happened in South Carolina today tend to send a message to the rest of the South, but to our nation, and especially to people in Washington, that we too must join this movement to free and liberate ourselves from the past.
In the final analysis, we are one people.
We are one American.
We all live in the same house, the American house.
And it doesn't matter whether we are black or white, Latino, Asian American, or Native American.
It doesn't matter whether we're from the North or the South, the East or the West.
We must learn to live together as brothers and sisters.
As Dr. King said, if not, we would perish as fools.
We must live under the United States of America flag.
They're taking the pole down now in South Carolina.
They've got this crane in there, and they're ripping the pole that held the Confederate flag that flew them.
They're ripping the pole out of the ground.
Man, I would not want to be that poll.
Can you imagine what they're going to do to that poll?
Because I don't think that poll is going to go to the museum.
The flag is already there.
Now, back to what Congressman Lewis said here.
He said, we must join this movement to free and liberate ourselves from the past.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, forgive me, please.
I hear what people say, and as the mayor of Realville, I apply real meaning and what I think is their real meaning.
And I react accordingly.
And I'm here to tell you that I am liberated from the past.
I am not living in the past.
I think it's these people who are, by definition.
Who is it that can't let go of the past?
We're on the verge here.
We got the President of the United States and a dangerously incompetent Secretary of State on the verge of okaying the state sponsor of terrorism in the world getting nuclear weapons.
That's the future.
That's tomorrow.
We're not even worried about we are talking about being liberated from the past.
This Confederate flag stuff is in the past.
I don't know about anybody else, but I'm not living in the past.
I have been liberated from it, and I think most people have.
I think the problem here is there are a lot of people that just are having a lot of trouble liberating themselves from their own minds.
How many people do we know that are still living as though it's still 1964?
How many people in the civil rights movement run around actually believing there's still slavery in this country and acting on it?
That's the impression I get listening to a lot of people.
You'd think this was 1830.
You would think this is not 2015.
You would think maybe it's 1962 when we're on the verge of the Civil Rights Act, but we're not there yet.
I'm sorry, folks, it's not you and me living in the past.
We have been liberated from the past.
Some of these people cannot liberate from their own minds.
This is that's just one thing.
Here's here, give you another example from the D.C. Examiner.
Late Tuesday, the Memphis City Council voted unanimously to dig up the remains of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife.
The council also voted to remove a statue placed in Forrest's honor.
The move came after Mayor A.C. Wharton called for the bodies to be dug up and relocated.
But Tuesday's vote is not the end of the story.
According to Memphis media, the Chancery Court would also have to approve the removal of the remains, and Forrest's family would also have to be involved in the decision.
Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife are currently buried beneath a statue honoring the general in a park which had been named after him until two years ago.
The park is now known as Memphis Health Sciences Park.
Officials with Elmwood Cemetery, the location of the general's original resting place, said they'd be willing to help move the remains, but said they didn't want to become the new home of the statue.
It's not known where the statue would go if the Tennessee Historic Commission approves its removal.
The commission not set to meet before October.
The move to relocate Forrest is part of what many see as a Stalinist effort to purge U.S. history after the tragic shooting in a Charleston, South Carolina church that left nine dead again.
Now, that's from the examiner story, the move to relocate this Stalinist purge.
Some people think that.
I just think, again, here's an example.
People unable to let go of the past.
Unable to let go of their own minds.
Where's the one more here?
Did I move?
No, there's one more here about some people upset with Thomas Jefferson.
I want to do something regarding him.
I thought I would have it next to have to find it.
Because up next, I've got Sanctuary City stuff.
Nope, Ortie did it.
That was the Connecticut Democrat leader debate condemning Thomas Jefferson as a race.
So let me quick time out here.
We'll come back because this, what I had here is a column by Deborah Saunders, who friend of mine, acquaintance, San Francisco Chronicle columnist, and she has a piece, Democrats Scurry from the Sanctuary Ship.
And see, that's the point that I made.
I mean, Trump has shifted the debate on this away from him and to the actual issue.
Let me have to break in here.
We will come back and continue right afterwards.
So don't go away.
Okay, let me guess, folks.
Some of you, when you heard me mention the name Nathan Bedford Forrest, it rang a bell.
You couldn't quite place it, but you had heard the name, right?
And then when I said Southern General, Confederate, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let me tell you about Nathan Bedford Forrest.
See, they already in Memphis renamed the name of the park.
Now they're going to remove the bones and his poor wife, whose name still hasn't appeared in the story.
But Nathan Bedford Forrest was a Democrat.
He was such a prominent Democrat, such a radical Democrat, he helped found the Ku Klux Klan.
Now who do you think honored this guy in the first place?
Democrats.
It wasn't a bunch of Republicans that built statues and flagpoles and memorials to this guy.
Who did it?
It was Democrats.
I'm going to tell you something else, folks.
All of this is peepee cockadoo doo.
I am not going to believe that the Democrats are serious about removing the scourge of the past until they rename everything in West Virginia after Robert W. Byrd.
Because you ought to see the list of things that are named after Robert W. Byrd in West Virginia.
It would take you, I don't know how many pieces of paper to list everything.
The highways, the rest areas, the junkyards, the buildings, the parks.
It is embarrassing.
The number of places in West Virginia which are named after Robert W. Byrd, who was a Grand Kliegel and a Klingon or some such thing in the Ku Klux Klan.
Well, he was.
And I don't see anybody making a mad dash to dig him up and move him somewhere else and to strip every, I mean, the federal buildings in that state, every damn one of them practically is named after him.
The highways, the turnpikes, the thoroughfares, the back streets, the back alleys.
He was the Democrat majority leader of the Senate, was considered the dean of the Senate.
He was a grand Klingon in the Ku Klux Klan for crying out loud.
They can talk about the Confederate flag all they want.
Bill Clinton, he said, I started crying.
I almost started crying.
I saw that flag come down to Helm.
He raised the damn thing in Arkansas in memory of his mentor, J. William Fulbright, also a segregationist senator.
Unrepentant segregation.
This is such caca, folks.
At the end of the day, all of you get John Lewis in there and all these other people, and the impression that they're leaving is that the Republicans suffer another big defeat today as the Confederate flag is removed in South Carolina.
The Republicans had nothing to do with putting the Confederate flag up.
And the Republicans had nothing to do with everything in West Virginia being named after Robert Byrd.
Now, Robert Byrd, apparently he can apologize for his past and be forgiven, but Nathan Bedford Forrest was not forgiven.
And Nathan Bedford Forrest, by the way, in his latter years pushed very hard for the past to be forgiven and reconciliation of black and white races take place.
But that didn't seem to matter.
Whatever Byrd was, Klingon, Kliegel, Klaxon, he was a recruiter, and he was the exalted cyclops of his local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.
Those are the guys with one eyes.
I remember that from the Sinbad movie.
Here's Barry in Greenville, North Carolina.
Barry, I'm really glad you waited.
Hello.
How are you, Rush?
First of all, let me say it is just an honor to be able to talk to you today.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
Same here.
First, this is about a rebel flag.
I'm going to make this quick because I work at a funeral home, and we've got a liberal in the back that's saying he's not dead.
But, you know, they've been under shading the truth, so I've got to get this done and get off the bottom.
You know, why don't we just skip all the rebel flags, the monuments?
Why don't we just remove the word South from our vocabulary?
You know, we could take the ass off of the compass road.
We could, the highway signs that say South on them, we could just remove that, you know, and go on with our lives.
Well, I know you're being somewhat facetious.
Yes, sir, I am.
Well, but let me tell you, you're not far off.
I had a story.
I've had it all week.
I just haven't gotten to it because I actually already mentioned it myself.
The story basically is just backup for what I've already said.
There's a reason that the left is going after South Carolina.
This thing that happened down there, this is what, you know what degrades me?
This is the stuff that grates me.
You had a really, really sad, horrible event.
And it immediately, practically immediately became a mechanism for the Democrat Party to advance in a political agenda.
You know, we get accused of politicizing everything.
And we don't just sit here and we get up every day and look at the things we cherish and believe in under assault and attack.
We get up and defend them.
They're the ones on a political march here.
We're on total defense.
And to take events like this and convert them into usage or a crisis is exactly what's happened here.
The reason this, the way this has been used, is to further the notion, Barry, that the entire South may as well be the Confederate flag.
And so the entire South, the Politico has a story, a long story, on exactly this premise, that the South is a throwback to slave day America, and we need to do something about it.
It's simply intolerable the way it is.
It talks about Southern culture, Southern politics, Southern lifestyles.
And it just happens to be that the South, as far as Democrat political consultants and others, they believe the South is a Republican geographic stronghold.
They believe the South is where the entirety of the pro-life movement is.
They believe the South is where every Christian lives.
They believe the South is where the memorial majority is.
They believe the South is where everything they detest is.
And so they want to reform it, change it, obliterate it, what have you.
And this sad, horrific incident is what has given them the fuel to try.
And this story in the Politico coming along shortly after the incident in the church proves the case.
And this story in the Politico actually said, and they were making A positive statement here that the United States would be more like Europe if we could just reform the South.
We'd be more like Europe.
Everybody would think of us as advanced, as enlightened as Europe if we didn't have the South, which in this story is called Jesus land.
So don't think I'm exaggerating here.
As far as your average Northeastern, left coast, wherever else liberal, the South is where every pro-lifer is.
The South is where every shotgun is.
The South is where every pickup truck is.
The South is where the Confederate flag is.
The South is where NASCAR is.
The South is where women are barefoot and pregnant in the kitchens.
The South is where everything they think is wrong with America is, even the accents.
The South is where people sound like hicks and hayseeds.
And of course, the South is where there was slavery.
And so for people who can't let go of the past, there may as well still be slavery in the South.
So this political story makes the point.
So you saying, why don't we just get rid of the South to stop calling it?
You're not far off.
You're very close to engaging here.
Pretty good satire, I would even say.
Okay, a couple of things here on Donald Trump before we get out of here today.
The former Mexican president Vicente Fox says that Donald Trump does not deserve his fortune and is questioning how Trump even became successful.
Vicente Fox was on TMZ.
You see how this works?
Former Mexican president on TMZ.
And he's saying, I don't know how he's made so much money.
He doesn't deserve it.
He's acted like an idiot as a man of business to another man of business.
He has made a mistake, a very stupid mistake.
As punishment for the mistake, he should donate all that money to resolve the immigration problem, said Vicente Fox.
Fox also called Trump ignorant about Mexico and its culture.
He said he doesn't really know Mexico.
He should get to know it and what the Mexican people are all about.
They're interesting people.
They're hardworking people.
They're people with dignity.
Trump has made a mistake a thousand times over.
And then next, the Federal Aviation Administration, the FAA, is removing Trump from the name of various navigation codes near Palm Beach International Airport.
Now, this is the height of pettiness.
You know, there are airways or highways in the sky.
The IFR flight, instrument flight rule flight, which is practically every flight you'd ever take, they're not straight lines unless it's late at night and nothing else is up there.
You know, FedEx will get a straight line or UPS will get a straight line, but they're vectors.
Like if you fly from Palm Beach to L.A., you're taken first over to Tampa, then to New Orleans, and you may, depending on winds and weather, go up a little bit further into Louisiana and then down.
But it's not a straight line.
And at every point where you change route, it is given a name.
So if you ever find the route, if you look at FlightAware, for example, a web app or an app called FlightAware, and you check your flight on whatever airline, it'll publish the route.
And every vector point is named after something.
And some of them have named after Trump here in Palm Beach.
He didn't even know it.
It's an honor he didn't even know was bestowed on him.
And the names are Donald, D-O-N-L-D, Trump, T-R-M-M-P, U-F-I-R-D for you're fired.
These are names that various air traffic control people have just put on the vectors.
For all I know, there may be some named after me because I am loved and adored by air traffic control.
Anyway, all these that have been named after Trump are being canceled.
The FAA is removing Trump from the name of airplane navigation codes or vector points near Palm Beach International Airports in the New York Times.
The FAA spokeswoman, Laura Brown, told the Times, well, in general, the FAA chooses names that are non-controversial.
Well, they're non-controversial.
Nobody knows what they are other than the pilots.
Well, and the ATC people.
But Trump was dazzled by this.
I mean, I'm having an honor taken away from me.
I didn't even know that I had.
I mean, Trump's had lawsuits with the airport here.
His big club here and his residence in Palm Beach.
He claims that local authorities are vectoring takeoffs right over his house so that the maximum engine noise on takeoff is heard over his house.
So he has sued.
He's wanted a longer runway built so the planes are higher on their departure routes over his house.
It's been kind of funny.
Trump will sue anybody, sue anything.
So he's now got to deal with this having had these names named after him, these routes named after him taken down.
Anyway, here is Martin and Billings.
No, Martin, hang on just a second.
No, left.
Martin in Billings, Montana, how are you, sir?
It's great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Good.
First time calling.
This is in response to the Washington Redskins losing their trademark.
Yes.
Yeah.
The NFL, the way they do their revenue amongst teams with their merchandise, is they share it amongst 31 teams.
Cowboys and Jerry Jones have their own little deal going on.
But now that they lose their trademark, now all these other people are going to be able to flood the market with Redskins and merchandise.
That's exactly.
See, that's exactly right.
That's a great point.
The Patent and Trademark Office, Trademark Office, told the Redskins they no longer have exclusive use of the term or the mark.
I mean, this itself, by the way, is this was almost a, I can't think of the term, it was an ad hoc decision.
And it's designed to punish the Redskins.
And it's a typical move by this regime, but it doesn't change anything.
The Redskins can still use it.
It's just they don't have exclusivity to it.
So now, for example, a guy lives in the South who owns a pickup truck and goes to church every Sunday can put the Redskins logo on his pickup truck legally.
He can sell anything with the Redskins logo on it.
Doesn't take the Redskins logo out of play.
It just opens it up to everybody.
It's an excellent point.
They got a quick question.
If the South is so bad, how come so many Yankees won't move there?
How many Southerners do you see moving to New York or Boston?