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Sept. 23, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:32
September 23, 2015, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Time Text
And greetings to you, music lovers, to musicians, and conversation of this all across the fluted plane.
Yes.
Trying to expand the audience here by using a European accent.
It's great to have you here.
The telephone number is 800-282-2882 and the email address, LRushbow at EIBNet.com.
So, may as well get into this.
During the break, I was watching Fox News, and there's some author expert on there.
And his point was, no, no, no, this is not a leftist Pope.
Who could give anyone that cock me behind me?
Of course not.
This Pope is not liberal.
Who in the right man?
Not this Pope is, is it Catholic?
You know, the wise thing to be would just be just drop this.
It doesn't matter.
It isn't going to change anything.
It ain't going to change anybody's mind.
It's not going to, and it's not an attack anyway.
It's just, you know, me and liberalism.
I believe that if more people were trained to recognize it, while at the same time being taught how damaging it is, that we wouldn't have anywhere near the number of messes and the amount of trouble that we have.
I fervently believe that.
Including in the area of human rights, I think they've done more to damage human rights.
And the irony is they get all this credit for having all of this compassion and good intentions.
What did they end up doing to really help you?
Look at L.A., record number of homeless.
Liberal Democrat run state.
Liberal Democrat run city.
But this Pope is talking about things that other popes haven't.
Climate change, discrimination, immigration.
I mean, it is what it is.
I realize there's nothing to be gained pointing it out.
But I can't help myself.
I'm not trying to condemn the man.
I'm not in any way, shape, manner, or form, nor disqualify.
Nowhere near is that my purview.
I'm not Catholic, which also means at the same time I'm not required to conform.
But there is the fact that Pope's addressed it.
I mean, he's been told, in fact, there's a soundbite.
We're going to jump ahead in the soundbite.
Yeah, grab number 10.
You know, when the Pope first became Pope, some of his early statements were clearly, proudly, happily anti-capitalist.
And I commented on that.
And I thought the way he was talking about capitalism sounded very, very close with the way it's written about in Marxist theology or ideology.
So I cavalierly threw out the attitude or the thought that I thought Pope sounded Marxist.
Well, then everybody said, oh, well, Limbaugh, the Pope is a Marxist.
And it reverberated through all four corners of the world.
And then we got stories that the Pope was asked about it and, of course, refuted it.
Yesterday afternoon on Channel 7, Eyeball News in New York, the co-anchor Liz Cho was speaking with the Our Lady of Lordis Church of Massapequa, the pastor there, Monsignor Jim Lesante, about the Pope's arrival.
And Liz Cho said he held a news conference on the plane as it was entering the U.S. He recognizes he's entering a kind of polarized political environment, and he willingly stepped right into it.
Someone said to me once, they were quoting Rush Limbo, do you think he's a Marxist?
And I said, I'm sure he's not a Marxist.
He might have certain socialist tendencies.
What he really is, which is far more frightening, is a true Christian.
Remember the bracelets they used to wear years ago?
What would Jesus do?
And Jesus would hang with the poor and the handicapped disabled.
He'd say, welcome the strange.
He'd go to visit people in prisons.
He would do all the loving, caring, compassionate things.
Say to a person involved with abortion.
I'm sorry you went through that, but come home and know that you're welcome here.
This is the work of Jesus Christ, and he does it well.
Okay, so the way this is explained, therefore, is to say that any religious leader who is saying things like Pope Francis is saying, is simply repeating the words of Christ.
And so it has manifested itself now that it is the popular opinion among people that are really not informed is that Christ was a modern day liberal Democrat.
And I still find this incredible.
If that's true, then why is there such contempt for evangelical Christianity among many in the Democrat Party and in the media?
And you can't deny that there is.
But here you have the most successful, the most prosperous, the most charitable.
However, you wish to define goodness, the United States is at the top of every list of all nations in the world.
And criticizing it as the problem.
I'm sorry, red flags go up.
Certain kind of people do that.
And so that's why my original comment was made.
And now the Pope is here and continues to spout what is the present-day Democrat Party agenda, which we're now being told is the agenda of Jesus.
Who knew?
Now there is a story here, but he did address this on the plane.
The story is in Time magazine, the headline, Pope Francis, I'm not a liberal.
As Pope Francis flew to the U.S. for the first time, the pontiff assured journalists on the flight that he's not a liberal.
Why did he have to say so?
It's just a question.
Why did he have to say so?
Asked to comment on the many media outlets who are asking if the Pope is liberal.
The Pope seemed bemused and decisive.
Some people might say some things sounded slightly more leftish, but that would be a mistake of interpretation, he said.
Well, you know, the Pope seems to be a victim of misinterpretation a lot because the Pope says something and the Vatican comes out later and says, no, no, no.
What the Pope meant was, that's what happened after the Marxists, after the anti-capitalism commons, the Pope, the Vatican came out and tried to clarify that.
He underscored the point.
He said, it is I who follow the church.
My doctrine on all of this, on economic imperialism, is that of the social doctrine of the church.
I don't know what that means.
Underscore, it is I who follows the church.
My doctrine on all this, on economic imperialism, is that of the social doctrine of the church.
So economic imperialism, well, the criticism of the United States as imperialistic, I mean, that comes from one particular ideology, too.
Leftists the world over have called us imperial.
And you know what it means?
You know what?
The insult is that we're running around and that we are conquering everything.
That we're running around and we're imposing ourselves.
We're conquering various countries and lands and occupying it and then stealing what is there for ourselves.
That's what they mean by imperialism.
So you throw economic in front of that, economic imperialism, which means that we are, I wouldn't know how to define economic imperialism other than we're stealing everything or enforcing our economic way capitalism on everybody else.
So anyway, there's a story in Breitbart here by Francis Martel, and the headline is, Miami priest to Pope Francis.
Why condemn capitalism so strongly but not communism?
Prominent Cuban-American priest Father Alberto Cutte questions Pope Francis' apparently warm attitude towards the Castro dictatorship, asking in a Miami Herald column, why do you so strongly condemn capitalism?
But we never see an equally strong condemnation of atheist communism.
Writing for the Spanish language El Nuevo Herald, Father Cute, a former television and radio host who left the Catholic priesthood for the Episcopal Church, asks three questions in this op-ed.
Number one, why do you and other religion leaders condemn capitalism so strongly and offer us a list of all the disasters that result from it on earth?
But we never see an equally strong condemnation of atheist communism, which continues to cause the world so much harm.
This inequality, when the time comes to condemn, appears unjust.
That's a pretty good question.
Why would you not condemn communism?
By the way, the Pope's not the only one who doesn't do that.
I mean, you can't, in the 70s and 80s, you couldn't find a Democrat to condemn communism either.
Question number two.
Why do we ignore those who suffer from the great poverty of a lack of freedom and who, for only expressing their desperation and demanding respect for the most basic human rights, are detained, harassed, and beaten?
Why do we ignore them?
And number three, is it really more important to have diplomatic relations with a country that has not had free elections in 50 years, that abuses its people, that has a well-documented history of oppressing and robbing the church than to seek justice, the common good and freedom for all Cubans?
And Father Cutete concludes, I don't understand and don't think I will ever begin to understand why a man of God can meet with oppressors but not the oppressed.
Well, I could answer those.
I could answer those with, you know, one arm tied behind my back to go with half my brain tied behind my back.
And they could quote Jesus in this answer.
Jesus said, go where the sinners are.
So the answer would be, I am meeting with the Castros to try to influence them from their evil ways.
His question, yeah, okay, fine, but why aren't you meeting with the victims of Castro?
Well, because I don't want to irritate the Castros as I try to save their souls.
That'd be the answer.
If I were the, that'd be my answer.
I go to where the sinners are, and I want to try to save their souls, these Castro thugs, and I want to meet with them, and I want to spread the word with my countenance and my presence.
I don't want to anger them by going and meeting their prisoners.
Not yet.
That would, and I think a lot of people, that makes sense.
It makes total sense.
So, see, folks, I can be fair.
I can be open.
I'm the epitome of all of that anyway, because all I care about at the end of everything is the truth is what is right.
Back to the Pope sound bites, given now that we have addressed this.
What are we up to here?
Oh, yes, soundbite number six from Pope Francis' brief remarks at La Casa Blanco today.
Mr. President, I find it encouraging that you are proposing an initiative for reducing abolition.
Climate change is a problem.
We can no longer be left to a future generation.
When it comes to decay of our common home, we are living at a critical moment of history.
We still have time to make the change needed to bring about a sustainable and integral development.
I would refer you once again to George Will's column on Sunday addressing all of this about environmental degradation and socialism versus environmental improvement and development via capitalism.
It was a great column.
It was a great piece.
And his whole premise was that if the Pope actually succeeded in implementing all the things he claims to believe, that poverty would return to many who have escaped it.
And this was George Will, an accepted member of the establishment, by the way.
Not me.
It was George Will, a celebrated member of the ruling class that was making these claims.
Not I, El Rushbow.
I was simply the vessel, for those who didn't read the George Will piece.
And the final pulp bite before we go to the break, this is a segment which he quotes the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Change demands on our part a serious and responsible recognition,
not only of the kind of the world we may be leaving to our children, but also to the millions of people living under a system which has overlooked them.
To use a telling phrase of the Reverend Martin Luther King, we can say that we have defaulted on a promissory note.
And now is the time to honor it.
Okay, who have we defaulted against?
Who have we failed here?
In case you're having trouble hearing because of the accent, what he said here was, change demands on our part a serious and a responsible recognition, not only of the kind of world we may be leaving to our children, but also to the millions of people living under a system which has overlooked them.
Well, now, where is he?
He's not in Cuba here, and he's not in China, and he's not in North Korea, he's in the United States of America.
So what's he talking about here?
People living under a system which has overlooked them.
Who's he talking about here?
Okay, so it must be our system of government here that overlooking certain people.
Who is it popularly said that they were overlooking?
I said the minorities.
Exactly right.
African Americans, women, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, transgenders, lesbians, gays, bisexuals.
That's what he must be talking about.
Right?
And we've defaulted on our promise.
After seven years of Obama's, we've defaulted.
I don't understand, folks.
I'm sorry.
Let's see.
Let's see.
Yeah, let me go back to the phone.
Tony in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Pleasure to speak with you, Russ.
Thank you, sir.
Just got a comment about the Pope.
I don't think you're going to hear a lot about abortion from him.
I think it's all about climate change.
He's the perfect guy for Barack Obama to cozy up next to Jamburger.
Further that message brings together a lot of different demographics and dynamics.
And I've even heard a lot of environmental types talk about this as their religion.
And so it even kind of melds those two worlds together as well.
I didn't understand 20% of what you said.
Again, it's a bad cell line.
It's not.
I can't describe how.
Can you hear me now?
Well, yeah, but you were answering why you think the Pope will not address abortion.
Is that what you were doing?
No, I was saying I don't think you're going to hear him say anything about it.
I think this visit is in Obama's relationship with him is purely climate change related.
It brings so many different voting blocs together and power groups together, and it's glorious.
So you think there's no question that there's a political arrangement between the two here for this week?
Oh, sure, of course.
Nothing just happens.
There aren't no coincidences.
There's probably, I mean, they probably have this written down somewhere about what they're going to talk about.
But we've got all these analysts on TV.
I just heard one on Fox saying, no, no, no, there's no politics here.
The Pope is simply being Catholic here.
Come on, man.
Well, maybe he is.
Maybe he is, but Obama is going to take advantage of it anyway.
He can't use them in anything.
Well, I don't doubt that.
Absolutely.
And for Obama, he's in the fourth quarter of his presidency.
He talked about the waters receding when he was elected.
This is the time you put in the UNACD climate change agenda.
You're already seeing the Volkswagen CEO.
Is this a crime against the planet he is now committed?
And I'm seeing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Look, I totally agree.
But I tell you, it's quite instructive to look at how many in the media are just totally outrageous.
But I can tell you on my little tech blogs, they want this guy crucified.
They think is the worst crime they can think of in the last 20 years, what Volkswagen did, falsifying emissions data.
I'm not kidding.
I'm not kidding.
There's some nutcases out there, folks.
I'm telling you.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have a question.
Maybe a couple of questions here.
And I ask these questions simply because I would like the answers.
And these questions derive from what I have heard on television today.
During our obscene prophet timeouts here, I have had, I very rarely do this, but I turned the audio up.
I actually listened.
And I've caught a couple of guests on Fox, and they've been asked, are you aware that people like Rush Limbaugh are calling the Pope Marxist?
Oh, yeah, yeah, we're aware of that.
And the Pope is clearly aware of it, too.
But like the Pope said on a plane yesterday, one of them, he's not a leftist.
It's just a misinterpretation.
And this one guest said, and there's nothing liberal about the Pope.
He's just a good Catholic.
He started rattling off charity and concern and all these other things that define Christianity and said, that's all the Pope is.
Okay, so I have a question because this seems to be a major point of contention.
So I have long maintained that whenever it happened in our welfare state, whenever we could probably find this with enough deep research, when welfare became or started to become categorized as charity is when liberalism began to be attractive to churches.
Churches quite naturally are big on charity, both as recipients for distribution and donors.
They do both sides.
And so welfare, it's become the percentage of our annual budget spent on welfare is over half now.
Social Security, if you count that as well, the Social Security and all the other social services, over half of our budget, is transfer payments from people working to not working.
I'm not trying to insult Social Security recipients by lumping you.
Don't misunderstand.
I'm just these strict budget numbers.
So along comes this Pope now and his not apologists, but the people translating for him or explaining, interpreting.
Oh, no, no, no, no.
This is ideal.
The Pope is not liberal.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Don't be so silly.
Don't be so foolish.
Don't be small-minded.
The Pope is simply a Catholic.
He's simply a Christian.
This is what Christians and Catholics do.
And then it's what Jesus did.
This is simply what Jesus did.
So my question is this.
I need some legitimate help on this.
I know that Jesus preached charity.
Did Jesus tell people to give their money to the Romans so that the Romans could then distribute it?
In other words, did Jesus tell people to give their money to whatever governing entity there was or entities there were at the time?
Or did he preach charity as an individual thing?
In other words, was Jesus a big government charitable advocate?
Seems to me that it might have been the opposite, that Jesus had some problems with governments.
Why are you shaking your head in there, Mr. Snerdley?
These are just open-ended questions to which I'm asking if people have the answer.
These are not rhetorical questions.
I know, why can't you just let this go, right?
You're sitting there.
Why can't you?
Well, I don't think there's anything offensive about these questions.
I'm one trying to understand.
Because it's come up today.
One of the undeniable truths in our culture is that the modern day Democrat Party does not like religion.
They don't like Christianity.
That's not even arguable.
Well, certain big government didn't like Jesus.
But my point is, when it comes to charity, the Pope seems to be advocating that governments need to do all of these big things.
And our interpreters on TV are saying, yep, that's what Jesus did.
So that's all.
Is that right?
I am not a theologian.
I have never used this program to preach or proselytize.
As you well know, I don't go into those kind of arguments.
Faith is a deeply personal, private thing.
That's why I don't even condone arguments about it on this program.
So I'm just asking here, I'm, I'm.
No, I'm not asking if when Jesus told people to be charitable, was he telling them to pay higher taxes and let the Romans take care of it?
He wasn't, right?
The Romans ran the show.
I mean, the Romans were the government then.
They were the federal government.
There might have been some local pretenders and so forth, but that's all I'm asking.
He said, render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, but he also then had a qualifier after that, which made it clear that Caesar was not entitled to everything.
I mean, they can interpret it.
Yeah, he was just saying, pay your fair tax and get the hell out of Dodge.
But this is why I'm asking the question, because it's being interpreted today.
The left, I find this fascinating.
The left, which does not hold any really great love for the Catholic Church or organized religion at all, is now all of a sudden trying to portray themselves as Christ-like.
And it's all in the name of big government, all in the name of try to portray now what the Democrat Party is doing, the American left is doing is Christ-like, taking advantage of the visit of the Pope in order to create that impression with people.
What, food stamps?
No, no, no.
There weren't.
I know they didn't use food stamps to feed the.
That's what the Romans.
This is why they don't have microphones.
They always ask, why can't we hear the people you're talking to?
This is exactly why.
Hey, hey, wrestling, you should say the Romans didn't have food stamps.
We know.
Grab audio soundbite number nine.
I mentioned this earlier.
This is Major Garrett on CBS this morning and a report on Obama and the Pope sharing a discussion of the burdens they face brought on by celebrity and change.
Pope Francis arrives defined at least in part by his humility, also as an instrument of change within the church and an international celebrity in a kind that popes in the past simply haven't been.
Now, President Obama knows a thing or two about change and celebrity, and it's actually these topics that the two have discussed in private, the burdens of dealing with celebrity and change.
That's what they've got in common.
They're A-listers.
They'd both be on the red carpet at the Emmys if it were tonight.
That's what they've got in common?
They are dealing with the burdens of celebrity and change.
You are.
I was just going to say, Major Garrett has forgotten something here.
Pope John Paul II was a bigger, if you want to, the word celebrity, that doesn't even cover it with describing John Paul.
When he says popes in the past simply haven't been, nobody, past or future, has come close to Pope John Paul II.
The Polish Pope, I'm sorry, this man drew crowds of 100,000 in Central Park, and he did talk about abortion, and he did talk about morality, and he did talk about right and wrong.
He did not talk about climate change.
He didn't talk about amnesty or immigration or anything.
He talked about What I said he talked about.
And it was huge.
Pope John Paul II, I don't think anybody yet can compare.
It's early in Pope Francis' papacy.
Not denying in polling that he's extremely popular.
Anyway, we're up against it here on time.
Have taken the brief time out.
We'll do that.
Come back and get to your phone calls again.
Sit tight, folks.
We'll be right back.
Don't go away.
All right.
Oh.
Yeah, I love this.
Jim in Moonshine Creek, North Carolina.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello, sir.
Hey, Mega Ditto's Rush.
Two quick points for the Pope from a devout, practicing Roman Catholic.
That is, he needs to know, the Holy Father, that we, the United States, have given more aid to other nations poor than all other nations combined.
And, Rush, that doesn't even mention our military umbrella with Chalaudo.
I know.
That's why, though, this is very frustrating to me, because it comes across as insulting or admonishing, and I don't know that it's deserved.
And well, I don't believe it is.
And number two, I would really ask Pope Francis, as a follower of the Catholicism, the Roman Catholic faith, we want you to talk about and advocate.
He is the leader of the original, the largest, and most conservative Christian religion.
He needs to condemn the Christian executions in Islam lands.
He needs to condemn abortion.
That's killing unborn Christians.
And he needs to advocate for Christians around the world and Christian principles and values, not advocate politics.
I think he's being used by Obama.
And that as a Christian and a lover of the faith, that really, really, really sets me back a little bit.
He's being used, do you think?
Does he have no role in this himself?
Rush, I think that it's symbiotic.
I think it's mutually beneficial to both.
I think he's trying to get a liberal agenda out.
Pope Benedict was conservative.
This Pope's a little more liberal.
But irrespective, I want the Pope to talk about Christian principles.
That makes total sense to me.
I digest it.
As you go through those things, those make perfect.
That's what John Paul II talked about all the time.
I mean, not the specific events, but similar related things.
The vicar of Christ and the number one representative of Catholic Church, not the Socialist International.
But as I look just at this country and the things that liberalism is touching, I think another reason why Donald Trump's candidacy is being so wildly embraced is because whether people can consciously define it,
point it out or not, they feel it.
Everything that used to be dependable in our country seems to be corrupted now.
There used to be pillars that you could rely on in times of trouble for strength and courage and confidence.
There used to be backstops.
There used to be things in place that when the degradation started, at least it was going to run up against an immovable force and stop.
There doesn't seem to be that anymore.
It seems that everything is being corrupted and rotting away.
And even the most respected, hoped-for institutions have not seemed to escape the corruption.
And the corruption all stems from, I mean, where is the corruption?
Both parties, I'm sure, have corrupt individuals, this kind of thing.
But liberalism exists in a corrupt state.
Its whole point is to tear down things that stand in its way, whether it happens within a democratic process by virtue of vote or not.
And I think a lot of people are scared by it.
And so they'll embrace any person or thing that they think might arrest it.
Anyway, Jim, I appreciate the call.
Thanks much.
Okay, folks, thank you so much for being with us today.
And thank you so much for your open-mindedness, your tolerance, compassion, and your understanding.
Absolutely right.
And we'll be back here tomorrow, I think.
Remmd and ready.
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