It is refreshing to interview someone as straightforward and truthful as David Limbaugh. He is what he is: a God-fearing, flag-waving, freedom-loving American patriot with a brilliant legal mind.
His new runaway bestselling book, “Crimes Against Liberty: An Indictment of President Barack Obama,” has struck a chord with the public, debuting at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.
An unusual page-turner for its genre, Limbaugh’s book presents exactly what the title suggests: a meticulous case against the President of the United States for his unprecedented assault on ordered liberty and the American way of life.
The cumulative impact of the evidence Limbaugh has compiled in his book is breathtaking. And footnoted.
When I spoke with Limbaugh (a dear friend) about his book, I thanked him for documenting in one readable volume the historic calamity that is the Obama presidency.
DAVID LIMBAUGH: I did not intend to compare Obama to every other president when formally sitting down to write this book. We’ve had some doozies who have served. But when you look at what Obama’s doing, he is almost single-handedly going to bankrupt the country. Granted we had a good start before him, but instead of tightening our belts during this challenge, he has moved into hyper-speed with his spending and he’s doing it with reckless abandon.
He wants to redistribute wealth. He is impervious to facts. I think even if he were capable of digesting the truism that Keynesian economics does not work, that government pump priming does not grow the economy, that it shrinks the pie, I think he would do it anyway.
He believes ideologically there ought to be equalization of wealth and that America is too big for its britches. We ought to redistribute wealth to foreign countries, and he’s done that with his International Monetary Fund (IMF) pledge with no constitutional authority and against the express prohibition of Congress.
I think he is taking us over the cliff of financial bankruptcy. He is undermining our position in the war and our security, he’s taken us back to a pre-9/11 mindset, and is dangerously reducing our nuclear arsenal at a time when the nuclear genie is out the bottle. I don’t mean to be overstating the case, but if you look at this new SALT treaty that he negotiated, it is very much to our disadvantage. Russia will end up with a decided advantage in tactical nuclear weapons. The Heritage Foundation explains it all in frightening detail.
HUMAN EVENTS: Do you think it’s on purpose?
LIMBAUGH: It’s complex. For those who are dismissive of the notion that Obama would be deliberately damaging our economy I remind them of his answer to Charlie Gibson in one of the debates where Gibson pointedly asked him why he would be in favor of increasing the capital gains tax rate knowing that every time we do we reduce revenues and that every time we decrease it we increase revenues. Obama said, “Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”
A person cannot but come away with the conclusion that he’s willing to spread the misery in order for the wealthy that he resents to be punished. You can’t deny that part of it’s on purpose. He is, on purpose, willing to destroy wealth for a great number of people and he’s doing it.
He’s purposefully implementing an agenda that will destroy America financially, whether or not he intends the harm. I don’t know that he’s part of this Cloward-Piven strategy to purposefully destroy it so that he can rebuild it in the name of socialism. He might be. I don’t know. But I do know that he’s purposefully adopting policies that will destroy the country and that he wants to bring the country down to size in terms of its outward projection of power.
Yet, there is a disconnect. While he tacitly admitted the negative effects of increasing capital gains rates, I think he is otherwise wedded to his blind faith in the notion that Keynesian economic policies can produce prosperity. He’s got this warped liberal notion -- this statist notion -- that you can actually increase prosperity and growth with these make work policies that he initiates. Despite incontrovertible evidence of the manifest failure of his policies to produce the growth (and cap unemployment at 8%) that he projected and promised, he doesn’t seem to be able to digest the bad news. It is simply contrary to his secular faith in the power of government to cure all ills and bring us toward enlightenment. It is not surprising that those who are unrealistic enough to advocate Utopian prescriptions are unrealistic enough to comprehend and accept their failure.
HE: In your book you make the case that Obama is a different kind of narcissist. You could make the case that most politicians are narcissists. What’s different about Obama?
LIMBAUGH: Clinton was a narcissist in the sense that he wanted to be adored by the public so much that he would even be willing to subordinate his ideology -- which he really believed in -- to remain high in the polls. He would move center, engage in a sophisticated triangulation strategy, he would do anything in order to stay popular, even if it meant compromising his and Hillary’s agenda.
Obama, I think, has a more intense case of narcissism, more a clinical case study as opposed to the lay understanding that you and I have about narcissists, i.e., self-absorbed people who look in the mirror all the time and crave love and adoration.
I think Obama has grandiose delusions about his historic role in the world. We saw it in how he choreographed himself during the campaign with the Greek columns as a backrop, injecting an echo effect into his voice and holding his head high in the air as if he were a pompous player in some royal regime. Don’t forget that he has this idea that he alone can cause the oceans to subside, that he alone can affect transformational change and he is hell bent on doing it even if it means sacrificing his second term.
He even said that in an interview, that he’d much prefer being a great one-term president than a mediocre two-term president. The horrifying thing about that is how he defines success and greatness. He defines it as transformational change, as uprooting America’s foundational principles. That’s what he’s about: transformational change of the America we know and love -- which he obviously doesn’t. You don’t want to fundamentally change something you love. Period!
HE: You document fundamental, habitual lies that are part of Obama’s governance scheme. Why do you think most couldn’t see through his façade during the campaign?
LIMBAUGH: When he had his candid moments such as with Joe the Plumber where he said he just wanted to spread the wealth around a little bit or when he made his “bitter clingers” comments, he would say what he really meant. He even said he was looking for transformational change.
But otherwise he fundamentally misrepresented who he was. He said he was post-racial, post-partisan and post-grievance and that he would bring a new era of politics, a different kind of politics to Washington. It turns out that he has been the most divisive president that I can remember. And it’s noteworthy that he brought about this divisiveness with his own statements and actions; he did not reach out to Republicans, but for the most part, excluded them from the process -- bringing them in at the last minute on major items of legislation, and then only for photo ops.
HE: Why do you think he has gotten away with it for so long?
LIMBAUGH: I think the mainstream media like Obama and like most modern liberals operate under this end-justifies-the-means mentality. They’re not about tolerance, they’re not about free speech, they’re not about racial colorblindness; they’re about results.
These liberals will call us all kinds of names and they’ll suppress our speech. Elena Kagan, Obama’s Supreme Court appointee, has advocated the “un-skewing” of speech -- only liberals could come up with this kind of psycho-babble: that it’s justifiable for government to un-skew speech if there is an “overabundance” of it -- like conservative talk. Thus their support for the Fairness Doctrine, Net Neutrality Rules, and campus speech codes. Cass Sunstein, Obama’s Regulatory Czar, advocates “cognitive infiltration.”
Back to more liberal-speak, cognitive infiltration is when liberals in the government get on websites and other media and advocate liberal positions while pretending to be grassroots citizens. This is what they say conservatives do, that the Tea Party is Astroturf, i.e. artificial. It’s just the opposite and more liberal projection.
This administration has a blog squad in the Department of Justice which spends its time surfing conservative websites and posting comments while pretending to be private citizens. This is within the Department of Justice, which is supposed to administer justice impartially -- not engage in political activism, much less partisan political activism.
HE: You also make the case that Obama is a dictator or at least believes he is.
LIMBAUGH: Yes, he acts like a dictator. Not only has he engineered the government takeover of private companies, but he also attempted to restructure the Chrysler and GM post-bankruptcy companies so to the decided advantage of general creditors (his unions buddies) and disadvantage of secured creditors, who are entitled to priority status under the law. When the secured creditors didn’t conform to his dictated cram down, Obama went out in the public and lambasted them publicly and called them a greedy group of speculators who took bailout monies but wouldn’t sacrifice for the public good.
In fact, the hedge funds had not taken any bailout monies and they were sacrificing because they were entitled to one hundred percent on the dollar on their secured claims and were willing to take about fifty cents on the dollar -- but not the 20 percent that Obama was demanding. They were not doing anything wrong; they were merely exercising their rights under the law.
Another outrageous example occurred when Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, asked Obama in a letter to consider freezing the stimulus money that had not yet been spent, saying that what had already been spent really hadn’t stimulated anything.
Four cabinet members simultaneously, as if it were not a conspiracy, fired off separate letters to Kyl threatening to withhold Arizona’s portion of the stimulus money as if it were Obama’s personal stash. As if Obama has the authority singlehandedly to withhold or dispense the stimulus money. It’s really scary.
HE: Which brings us to the case you make in your book against Obama the Bully. It seems to me that Obama doesn’t much like the actual job of being President, he just likes imposing on everybody what he thinks is best for them.
LIMBAUGH: I agree with you. I don’t think he’s a details guy. I think he’s a big policy guy and he wants to issue his edicts and expect his minions to get it done. [LAUGHS] As with the Gulf oil spill: “Just plug the damn hole!”
Obama called financial institutions “fat cat bankers” and you want to tell me this guy’s sophisticated and presidential? “Fat cat bankers”! That’s disgusting! Saying it is un-presidential is about the nicest thing I can say about it.
During speeches like the State of the Union when other presidents were trying to be unifying, he says if anybody misrepresents his plans he’ll call them out. This is street thug language! This is Chicago street thug organizing behavior.
He attacks Fox News as not being a news organization like other news organizations. He tried to shut Fox News out of the news for an interview of Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg because Major Garrett had been asking some tough questions. So the administration tried to punish Fox. In that case, though, the other news organizations in the White House news pool defended Fox, to their credit, and the administration had to relent.
And let’s not forget when Obama said, through Mr. Gibbs, this fine creature serving us as White House press secretary, that he would keep his boot on the throat of BP.
Is this guy Don Corleone? Can you imagine the outrage if Tony Snow had said that?
He has mocked the Tea Partiers. His own Department of Homeland Security implied Tea Partiers are domestic terrorists and suggested that veterans coming back from service in the military with right wing views are one nurse shy of serial killer Richard Speck.
But as dictatorial actions go, Obamacare is the crowning blow when you consider the disgraceful manner by which he crammed it down our throats through lying, cheating, legislative trickery and bribing. After he had failed in his earlier attempt to pass it and the public had soundly repudiated him in the Massachusetts senate election (which was clearly a referendum on the Obama agenda, especially Obamacare), his response was he had to get the American people to take a second look at his plan. He wasn’t chastened, he wasn’t humble, he wasn’t contrite in the State of the Union speech. He gave no indication he heard or cared what the people said. He went back, forced it through against the will of the people then claimed a victory on our behalf and pledged to continue working for us.
HE: I promise this is not a birther question. A great deal of Obama’s influences and the shaping of who he is actually came from third world politics outside of America…
LIMBAUGH: I agree. I have not focused much on the birther question. I don’t know what the final facts are, I’m not sure we’ll ever know, but regardless of where he was born, the reason the Framers wanted to keep a foreign-born person from becoming president was that they distrusted their innate loyalties. Whether or not Obama is an actual American citizen, he has the instincts of someone who cannot stand America.
I think he has visceral contempt for pre-Obama America. He displays the attitude of his mother and stepfather, and his mentor, Franklin Marshal Davis. In his book he describes his mother’s disdain for America. He married a woman who believes America is downright mean. He ran with America-hating leftists. He attended an America-bashing church. He promised fundamental change -- something that one who loved this nation and its founding principles would never do. He embarked on a world apology tour -- denouncing America as arrogant, dismissive, selfish, imperialistic and historically blemished. Has he no appreciation for America’s role as a liberator of people? Of our unparalleled record of magnanimity as the world’s sole superpower? He obviously disapproves of the free market system, despite having boasted that he was a fierce advocate of it. He seems to want to bring America down to size; to right the alleged (mythical) wrongs, to correct the inequities in wealth. I seriously believe he has a grudge against America. It’s personal.
HE: Do you think Obama’s presidency has harmed race relations?
LIMBAUGH: Without question. Obama has brought up race and exploited it at every chance he’s gotten. He did that with his friend professor Henry Gates when he accused the Cambridge Police Department of acting stupidly. That was all about race. He’s accused Arizonans and conservatives who support the Arizona law of nativism and racism.
When Americans overwhelmingly oppose the mosque at Ground Zero he implies it’s for racial reasons. His Attorney General Eric Holder, with Obama’s full blessing, says we are cowards on race, and that we’re not willing to have a national dialogue -- though we’ve been having a national dialogue on this for decades. I don’t know what planet these guys are on.
The Obama-Holder Justice Department dismissed the case against the New Black Panther Party members even after having won it by default judgment, obviously for racial reasons. Some insiders at the Justice Department like Christian Adams said there was an unwritten policy at the Department of Justice that whites cannot be the victims of blacks in civil rights voter intimidation cases.
They are expressly applying a race conscious policy to the administration of our laws, which are supposed to be administered blindly: the blindfolded Lady Justice. Color should be irrelevant, and its injection into justice destroys the concept of equal protection under the law.
HE: Your book was timed to come out before the elections and it really does give people the information they need to win people’s hearts and minds. Is this about independent voters?
LIMBAUGH: I did not just write a handbook for people to convince independents to come to our side. I think independents will come to our side (and they’re already leaving Obama in droves) as a result of principled opposition and principled advocacy of the conservative ideal. You don’t need to specifically cater to the independents by diluting our message. I think that’s where we make our mistake. If the GOP will stick to conservative principles and employ inspired leadership they will rebuild an enormous base.
My hope is that Crimes Against Liberty will serve as a reference guide, or, as one host aptly put it, a combat manual as we attempt to persuade our friends and neighbors to oust officeholders enabling Obama’s disastrous agenda. We ignore Obama’s capacity for mischief and the magnitude of the destructive impact of his agenda at our nation’s peril. Hopefully, this book will help us not to underestimate the gravity of what we are facing.
HE: Are you trying to make the case that Obama should be impeached before 2012?
LIMBAUGH: No. This book is a comprehensive indictment and listing of Obama’s abuses of power and his misrepresentations and his bullying and his conceit and his narcissism and how his personal characteristics, when coupled with his irrepressibly extreme left wing ideology, spells disaster for America. The cumulative evidence I’ve documented is staggering. One reader Tweeted that he began to highlight the book for salient points and had to quit because every sentence was being highlighted.
I am not alleging in the book that he has committed infractions under the criminal code, that he’s a common criminal. I am not suggesting that he has committed high crimes and misdemeanors so as to constitute impeachable offenses under the Constitution. I am not advocating and do not advocate in the book that we initiate impeachment proceedings if for no other reason than I think it would backfire and it would make him a victim and it would play into his hands. Even the relatively small number of liberals who are disgusted with the destructive path he’s taken us on would flock back to him, thinking it was an excessive partisan exercise. If we were less cynical about the Constitution and the rule of law, then Obama may well be in jeopardy at least of an impeachment inquiry. His abuses of power that I detail in the book are stunning. But again, I’m not advocating impeachment. Let’s beat him at the ballot box.
But if you asked me if I honestly think he’s committed infractions that might rise to the level? Oh, yeah. But that’s not the thrust of my book or its purpose.
However, EU recognized the failure of the overboard spending and most countries adopted rules about government spending in debt - but Obama keeps marching ahead towards bankruptcy, driven by agenda only...