RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM

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RUSH: Yesterday on the program when we ran out of time, we were talking to a caller from Virginia named Joe. He's Joe from Pulaski, Virginia. He's a very nice guy who wanted to take me to task for my stance on unions, and we just ran out of time, and it's a good call. We asked Joe if we could call him back. He said yes, so here he is. Joe, welcome back to the program.

CALLER: Hey. Thank you, Rush. How are you doing?

RUSH: Just fine, sir. Let's start at the beginning. You called, and your original point to me was what?

CALLER: The original point was that not all of us were born, or not everyone was born with a multimillion-dollar talent or a multimillion-dollar entrepreneurial spirit. But there were a multitude of us who were born with the ambition and the drive and the desire to go out and to work and to make the best living that we possibly can. And the truth of the matter is: corporate greed does exist. And I know your view of the union representatives is entirely different from mine; and I think, you know, by using a couple examples I can, you know, show you what my perspective is.

RUSH: Okay, before you go there, would you define...? I like to define terms.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: Because -- and you have just used a debate technique that is found frequently in the Ivy League. "I'm sure you'll agree with me, Rush," before I've had a chance to agree or not, "that there is corporate greed."

CALLER: (laughing) Well...

RUSH: So I think greed is one of these things like selfishness that has to be defined. What is corporate greed?

CALLER: Okay. Corporate greed, in my opinion --

RUSH: All right.

CALLER: -- is where a corporation will work their workers and use them to their advantage, and when it comes to time for that particular employee to gain a particular benefit from their labor, the corporation will do something to that employee to dismiss them and have them to lose their benefits. And I have a perfect example of that. My father-in-law worked for a company locally here, and with 20 years of service, he would have gained a pension with that particular company. When he was four months short of that 20-year anniversary date, he was laid off and did not get his pension plan. They never called him back to work. Things like that do exist. But getting back to the union aspect of it, you know, there are a lot of conservative-minded union people out here who see the need for corporate profits, because we understand that if the corporation does not profit, neither do we. And I know that your opinion of the corporate -- or the union heads is very like your opinion of these Somali pirates.

RUSH: Ah! Ah!

CALLER: Their main objective is to, you know, capture the company, take it over, and hold it hostage until all of their erroneous demands are met. You know, but my opinion of the unions --

RUSH: Now, wait a minute. Again you've put thoughts in my head. You have just said that my opinion of union --

CALLER: No, of the union leaders.

RUSH: Union leaders is to --

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: -- equate them with the merchant marine organizers off the coast of Somalia?

CALLER: Right. Right, because their main objective... You know, I believe, you know, from listening to you, in your opinion, their main objective is to hold the company hostage until they meet their demands. But in my opinion, you know, union representatives are there just like a pro-football player's agent is there for him.

RUSH: Ah.

CALLER: They are there to negotiate.

RUSH: See, now, that's... Look, I understand the point you're trying to make, but that analogy breaks down on one of the fundamental problems I have with unions. I want to go back to the top. You said not all of us are born with, what you say-million-dollar talent --

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: -- or entrepreneurial spirit.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: Well, you know, I don't know that anybody is born with a talent.

CALLER: It is God-given talent, Rush, and you are the perfect example of that.
RUSH: No, it is loaned by God, but you have to develop it.

CALLER: God has given it to you.

RUSH: Okay, you're using me. Every effort was made in my young life to get me to conform to certain behavioral standards, to certain preparatory standards for being an adult, and I rebelled against most of them.

CALLER: Just as I did.

RUSH: Pardon?

CALLER: Just as I did. My entire families is liberals and I'm the only conservative in the bunch.

RUSH: Okay. But I use my own example. Nobody at any time when I was growing up thought I had any talent. Nobody! In fact, I was the one my family was worried about because I quit everything they made me do from Boy Scouts to Cub Scouts. I quit.

CALLER: (chuckles)

RUSH: They didn't think I had the ability to do anything. I didn't even get good grades, and I didn't like school.

CALLER: But you knew you did.

RUSH: Well, I knew what I loved.

CALLER: Exactly. That's my point.

RUSH: I knew what my passion was.

CALLER: You know, all of us --

RUSH: I also knew -- now, I didn't come from a background of family members who were members of unions, but I knew that -- it was the product of the way I was raised and just something instinctive inside me. I knew that I was going to have to do it myself. I wanted to do it myself. I did not want to be pushed up the ladder by anybody. I didn't want anybody running interference for me because nobody was.

CALLER: And you and I share that same sentiment.

RUSH: All right, now, here's my conclusion from this. You say that not everybody is born with whatever these-million-dollar talents and abilities, and I'll agree not everybody is destined to become a millionaire.

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: Not everybody is destined to become some world-renowned entrepreneur, like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett or whoever, but I do think that the vast majority of people are much more capable than even they know. They have much more potential than even they know. It's just that our society beats it out of them. Our society -- and, by the way, I also believe that most limitations that people have are self-imposed. "Well, I can't really do that because somebody won't like me doing it," or, "I'll have to move. I don't want to." But are fewer obstacles placed by other people standing in your way than you know. They're just convenient when somebody puts an obstacle in your way to hide behind them, but most of the limitations we have are self-imposed.

Now, I've always said this: if you want to join a union, if anybody does, that's fine and dandy. I just hope that you understand what you're doing because your union organizer is not your agent. He's not Scott Boras going out and getting $270 million for you based on what you're producing and what you're earning. Your union organizer doesn't even see you as anything but a name, a number. He doesn't see your work. He just sees you as part of the giant group and he's going to go out and get a contract for the group, and so the opportunity to maximize potential as a union American is abrogated to the whole group.

CALLER: But there's one thing, Rush, that I feel like that you're overlooking.

RUSH: What?

CALLER: And that is the fact that we don't have representatives that represent us on an individual basis like an NFL player would have with his agent.

RUSH: Neither do I!

CALLER: Neither do we obtain the same talents that those NFL players have, either. But yet we as a group, we are not pulled down to the bottom producer. The bottom producers are lifted up to the highest producer's standards, which increases their standard of living.
RUSH: Yes, but see, that's not done because of their productivity.

CALLER: But yet --

RUSH: It's done because of coercion. It's not done because they have merited.

CALLER: But you have to --

RUSH: So what you're telling me is that the bottom feeders deserve to earn more --

CALLER: No, no, no.

RUSH: -- simply because they're on the bottom.

CALLER: That's not necessarily what I mean.

RUSH: Well, it's --

CALLER: What I'm saying is you cannot blame the GM predicament on the union and the union leaders. The blame must be put on the company executives to who sat down and deliberated that union contract. They should have had better foresight than that, to have been able to look at it unions and say, "We are not going..."

RUSH: Well, wait a second, now. It's not just that clean and cut. When you --

CALLER: But they should have foresight.

RUSH: When you have Gettelfinger or whoever, running the UAW, whoever has been in the past, putting a gun to these executive heads and threatening a strike -- while over at Toyota and Lexus no such walkout is threatened -- there is a competitive pressure there that's been brought to bear. See, I think it is... It offends my sensibilities.

CALLER: Well, Rush --

RUSH: Wait. Let me finish the sentence. It offends my sensibilities to ask anybody to pay me when I'm not working anymore. It offends me. I would never ask someone to do it for me.

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: But that's what unions do! They demand to be paid more when they're not working than when they are.

CALLER: They shouldn't have.

RUSH: They demand to be paid when they're fired. They demand to be paid lifetime pensions.

CALLER: The GM executives --

RUSH: I have made the decision to provide that for myself.

CALLER: But the GM executives should not have signed such a contract. That's my entire point. They should have said, "No, we cannot do this," and let 'em strike, let 'em go on strike.

RUSH: They didn't. They went ahead and signed it.

CALLER: But they should have.

RUSH: And I have said this, but now exactly what anybody with economic common sense knows, that has killed the golden goose, and now, where are we?

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: We are at the mother ship that provides employment for the UAW members --

CALLER: Well, Rush --

RUSH: -- is barely hanging on, and we hear that there are very few concessions that Gettelfinger is willing to make, and Obama sides with the unions, and so what's happening here is that politics has taken over. There's no economics going on here. If there were economics actually ruling this, none of what's happened in the last six months with the auto industry would be happening. Let me get even more esoteric with this: unions are collectivist in nature. They are deeply politically partisan. The union leaders exist today to elect Democrats, and they will take your dues and everybody else's dues and spend them primarily for that purpose. As such, union leadership -- by definition, by structure -- is working against the interests of the companies they owe their existence to. You have a company who is trying to exist here in a capitalist free market, which is got as its number one employee group a leadership that is collectivist and socialist. How is it possible for a union to be anti-free market capitalism and at the same time be of help to pro-free market capitalist companies? It just doesn't work.

CALLER: May I explain that? All right. Now, can we go back in history just for a moment?

RUSH: Let me take a break.

CALLER: All right.

RUSH: We gotta take a profit center time-out here --

CALLER: (chuckles) Okay.

RUSH: -- and we'll continue after this. Don't go away.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: And we're back with Joe from Pulaski, Virginia, who is arguing with me about his interpretation of my view of union workers, which I'm going to explain in a political sense here in greater detail in just a second.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: But you go ahead, what point did you want to make here?

CALLER: Can we go be back in history just for a moment?

RUSH: You can go back anywhere you want.

CALLER: All right. In the late fifties and early sixties the NFL players were busting themselves wide open every Sunday for probably 12 to 1,800 bucks a week.

RUSH: That's right.

CALLER: Now, given the popularity of the NFL was not that great at that particular point in time in history --

RUSH: That's right.

CALLER: -- but as the popularity grew and the profits for the owners began to grow, the players started to see this, and they said, "Wait a minute, something is askew here. These owners are making these massive profits at our expense. So, therefore, let's form a union, and let's start negotiating for a share of those profits." That's how the players' union began. Now, it was great and it was wonderful, and I think if every corporation used the NFL's model as a bargaining and negotiating example, things would be great because --

RUSH: Because you know that the players get 60% of the gross.

CALLER: All right. But now, look what happened. The owners, seeing these salaries start to escalate, and they said, "Wait a minute, we've got to put in a salary cap." Therefore, they knew at that moment --
RUSH: Players went along with -- the salary cap saved the damn league.

CALLER: Exactly. That's my point. And there is common ground between corporations and unions to save the entire situation.

RUSH: Okay, I want to take you back here because you defined corporate greed, when I asked you to define corporate greed, you used a personal story, somebody in your family got laid off four months before pension time. I think you had a single experience happen, you may have heard of a couple or three more of those. I could sit here and tell you as a self-employed entrepreneur, I could tell you all the times I've been canned, how unfair it's been. You say I was born with talent. I spent a lifetime developing it. I've never thought that my strength was going to be organizing myself into a group. I am the epitome of the individual. I am the smallest minority on earth. I am an individual, as everybody else is. I hate to see people squander their potential. I just do. It bothers me greatly. I think this is a common occurrence that people see something happen in a corporation and make a generalization, bad experience, hurt feelings and so forth, and that can lead you to think that that's how all corporations do business all the time.

If anybody had a single, bad, rotten experience with a woman, would they conclude that all women are the same? Would they want a union to guarantee their relationships, in other words, after they had been shafted? Same thing with a woman and a man, turn it around the other way. You know, I look at your union leadership, and they just look at you as a source of confiscated money. Your dues equal confiscated money for the Democrat Party. So from a human personal standpoint, I just think so many Americans are underperforming their own potential. You mentioned hard work. Well, that's key to it, hard work and knowing what you love and want to do. But let's get to the strictly political and philosophical about this because this, I think, is important. Like I asked you, how is it possible for a union to be anti-free market capitalism and at the same time help a pro-free market business or company? It's a conflict of interest to me. Unions that do not share the core values of a business owner shouldn't have anything to do with that business.

If the union's core value is punishing the business, shutting it down, if necessary, constantly getting people to hate the business; if the union's purpose is to create negative PR about the business, then how in the hell is that helping the business? Unions that contribute to a political party, that conduct War on Prosperity; unions that donate money to a political party that is anti-capitalist and anti-free market shouldn't be allowed to have anything to do with the private sector because those unions are working against the private sector, with their buddies in arms at the Democrat Party. It makes no sense. Unions that contribute to political parties that favor card check are a problem, not a solution. Jobs here are at stake. But I just don't understand what is magical about an employee base, or a union leadership that opposes philosophically and structurally the very business that it claims to represent the employees of. And we see the fallout here. It's happening all across American business, these two things are a conflict of interest, and they are untenable.


RUSH: Our nice caller used the NFL as an example. Don't forget, would you rather get a raise because you're good, or because everyone gets one every six months? Remember, running backs make more than centers, quarterbacks make more than defensive backs, and there's going to be a lockout in 2011.

You better explain why the individual is so important. You know, a lot of people, you got a whole bunch of brand-new tuner-inners out there, Rush, and a lot of these people think the individual is just a greedy SOB, and the individual, a bunch of individuals are what got the country in trouble." "If I have to explain this, it's over." I mean, it depresses me to have to try to explain this, why is the individual important? If you have to explain why the individual is important in the United States of America, then you have to explain freedom, and if you have to explain that, I'm at a loss. I guess I'll just ask you a question.

To those of you in the audience who kind of have a fit when you hear me say that this administration's targeting and making an all-out assault on the individual, which is an assault on freedom, individual freedom and liberty, where and how do you think your freedom comes from? Why is it you are free? To me, that answers it. I mean are you free because you are a member of a group? Or are you free because you are your own soul, endowed by your creator, God, certain inalienable rights: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. From where does your freedom come? Do you not have freedom until you join a club? Do you not have freedom until you join a union? Do you not have freedom until you are part of the disabled? Do you not have freedom until you are a minority? Where does your freedom come from?

In the United States of America, what our revolution was fought over -- the whole concept of individual freedom and liberty was the reason we sought independence from the tyranny of King George. Not Bush. George III of Britain. I said back in the nineties when the Clintons were running this show, "You know, rugged individualism is what built this country," and Mrs. Clinton went out there and took me on and ripped me, and we forget what she said, but she had a very critical comment about rugged individualism. Rugged individuals don't care about anybody else, they leave everybody else behind, and it takes people like Mrs. Clinton to care about the people who get left behind when rugged individuals take over.

Mrs. Clinton had a book that says It Takes a Village to raise a child. I said, no, it doesn't, it takes individuals to raise a child. It doesn't take a village. The town doesn't raise a child, village or what have you. That was just code word for the parents don't really matter. It's the school. It's government enterprises that are responsible for raising the child right. And nothing could be further from the truth. This country was not built on group politics. The country was not built on group identities. The country was built on rugged individualism. Rugged individualism is portrayed, unfortunately, as selfishness. But it is not selfishness. Rugged individualism is self-interest, and self-interest is good. If we were all acting in our own self interest... What are your self interests? Let's say you're a father, a husband. What is your self-interest?
Well, if you take it responsibly, the responsibility of being a husband and father, your self-interest is improving the life that your family lives. You want economic opportunity for them. You want social stability for them. You want a relatively crime-free existence. You want some security. You want to see to it that your kids don't go off the wrong path. All of these things are the things that you work for. And you rely on yourself to provide them. Of course you have support groups, the church and friends and so forth. It doesn't mean that you are solitary, doesn't mean that you're isolated. But it means that you accept responsibility for your life and what happens to you is your responsibility, and that you have, in this country, all of the ability and opportunity in the world to make the most of it. Or, you can slough it off, and you can not make the most of yourself.

But then you're not acting in your own self-interest. Then you're letting everybody down. When you don't seek your best, when you don't try to be the best you can be, you're letting everybody down, you're letting the country down. Obama even said this. When talking about the dropout rate, he said, "You people dropping out, you're not helping your country. You're harming your country." That's the same thing: self-interest. He won't ever say that again. It sounds too Reaganesque, and it sounds too conservative. But individuals, rugged individuals have great and high expectations of themselves. It was rugged individualists that built the railroads. It was rugged individualists that discovered the New World. It was rugged individualists that dreamed about getting to the moon.

It was rugged individualists that invented the automobile and the airplane, the bullet, the gun. It was rugged individualists who invented medicines, improvements in health care. It wasn't a bunch of groups. "But, Rush! But, Rush! The pharmaceuticals have a bunch of people in laboratories working." Yeah, they do. There's somebody that runs them, but they're all working to try to be the best they can be and come out on top. Thomas Edison, the lightbulb. Benjamin Franklin, electricity. Alexander Graham Bell, the telephone. Marconi, the radio. Henry Ford, automobile mass production, the assembly line. Karl Benz, the automobile. I'll never forget a story. Reagan was governor of California in the seventies -- and this is in one of the books about Reagan.

I heard William Rusher who was the former publisher of National Review tell the story. I'm paraphrasing this. There may be others that know it better. But the students at Berkeley were all bent out of shape one day as they always were during the free speech movement. They didn't like what Reagan was doing with the National Guard. They didn't like Reagan's policies. They thought Reagan, back in the seventies, was just an old man, out of touch, he had no clue about their lives, and who was he to sit there and make policies about their future? So they demanded, they had a sit-in, State Capitol in California, somewhere outside his office, they got in the building, they were let in, they demanded to see him. And at some point Reagan let a couple of these student leaders in, and they went in there, cocky young little kids, and they essentially said, "Who are you, old man? You don't know anything about our lives. You don't know how we function. You don't know how we get along. You don't know anything about the telephone, you don't know anything about computers, televisions, you don't know anything about that. These things are all foreign to you. Look at all these old-fashioned things around here."

And Reagan looked at them and said, "You know, you're right about that. We had to invent these for you to use them. We had to invent them for you." Take your favorite actor or actress, take your favorite television personality and ask yourselves what government, what protective agency got them their job, or was it rugged individualism? Or sleeping on the couch or whatever they had to do, but they did it. They also get $20 million a movie because they put people in the theater seats. Whether the movie's any good or not, people go, except Tom Cruise is in trouble right now. Well, Valkyrie just wasn't quite it. But the point here, ladies and gentlemen, is that anything that beats you down, anything that says to you that you're no more than anybody else, that you're no better, no different, no worse, that you're the same as anybody else, is lying to you, and they're seeking to control you. They're seeking to limit your own ability and your own desire, because we're not the same. The whole premise of equality, it's a great thing to strive for, like equality before the law, equality in job opportunity and so forth. But there are no two things that are equal, certainly not outcomes. Other than identical twins, no two human beings look exactly alike.
Do you realize that as many human beings as will be created in the history of the earth, no two of them will look alike. It's not possible, other than the rare cases of identical twins. But even those people are not the same. They have the same shell, the same look, but they're not the same inside. No two people are the same. Everybody's got different level of ambition, desire. Everybody has a different IQ. Everybody has different intelligence. Everybody has a different metabolism. Everybody has a different hairline. Everybody's got something. No two people are the same. And it's not fair. Some people are smarter than others; some people are more creative than others. Some people could walk down the street and just have people throw money at them.

Other people can toil their whole lives and never make more than minimum wage. Why? Who knows. But it is our contention that the people who never make more than minimum wage can do far better if they're just invested in themselves, not in a government, not in a president, not a Congress, not a program. How many people in those people's lives tell 'em that they're special, versus how many of them tell them, "You don't have a chance. You don't have a prayer. This country's racist. It's homophobic; it's bigoted. You don't have a chance. You need to vote for us." Even I, ladies and gentlemen, you listen to me, and you see whatever you see, but you see me as successful, it may make you mad, may make you furious, but nevertheless you see me successful. But you don't know the 35, 37 years that I've spent in this business since I was 16 (minus five that I worked for the Kansas City Royals baseball team) you don't know the seven times I got fired, and you don't know how many people in this business told me to quit and told me to give it up, that it's not a fair business, even if you're good, there are too many idiots above you, too many jealous people above you that don't want you to get anywhere because you're better than them. Hey? Hello? That's the world. There are a lot of professors who don't want you to be smarter than they are. There are a lot of people working at banks who are tellers that probably could be at the investment side but somebody is threatened by them. Everybody's trying to hold everybody back.

It's just human nature, and it's only the belief in yourself that propels you through all those things, and yourself is the individual. I got fired seven times. One time was it probably justified. The other times due to vagaries of the broadcast business, but each time I got fired the person that fired me said, "You know, you really don't have what it takes to succeed here. If you want to stay in this business you need to go into sales or something else. You really don't have that much talent," and I'm saying to myself, "How would you know? You've never let me exhibit it. You and your brilliant management have come up with ways that I could only say this here or that there, and I can only take that much time. How do you know what my talent is? And when was the last time you cared to really find out what my talent is?"

Without believing in yourself, you're going nowhere, and you won't believe in yourself if somebody beats the individual out of you. If somebody convinces you that you don't deserve to do better than anybody else because that's not fair, and they are teaching you that in school about your grades and they're teaching you that about economics. It's not fair that you might have a nicer car than the schlub down the street. It's not fair. It's humiliating to the people who have less. So they're trying to beat the individual out of you, and the individual in you, the belief in yourself is the only thing you've got to compete against everybody that's trying to hold you back, and they all are. It's the way of the world. You look at things from afar, you look at pop culture, you look at movie stars, and you think that's a community, and they all decided one day, they all decided that Cameron Diaz is great and they all got together and they all loved Cameron Diaz and they've all made her a big star.

That's the image they project because they want you to think it's all a giant community. Cameron Diaz is like everybody else, she had to fight for everything she has, and they're nipping at her heels now as she gets older, same thing with Julia Roberts, it doesn't change, no matter where you are, no matter what kind of glamour. You take a look around you, the genuinely successful people that you see who you want to be did not check their individualism at the door when they started their work. They didn't check their self-interests at the door, and they didn't check their self-respect, and they didn't turn over the belief in themselves to somebody else. That's all I'm talking about and that's under assault by this administration, which wants to control and limit freedom, 'cause the only way Obama can get the power he wants and the Democrats can get the power they want is if you willingly turn it over to them, by getting rid of your self-interest, your self-respect and holding your best interests at heart. Your best interests do not coincide with your government's, especially now.