by Frederick Mann
Introduction
Rush Limbaugh is a modern American phenomenon. His success makes him worth listening to. Rush's principles will be stated briefly as I interpret them. In some cases, I will add my own elaborations. The interested reader should consult Rush's two books: The Way Things Ought To Be and See I Told You So. Obviously I'm selective in which of his principles I cover, and I don't hesitate to state my own views. To get Rush's real and complete views, you need to read his books, listen to his radio show, watch his TV show, and subscribe to his newsletter. I recommend them all, except for the newsletter which I've never seen.
Copies of Limbaugh's books can be purchased at Amazon.com by following the links above.
Philosophical, Political, and Economic Principles
• Ideas have consequences - therefore it's necessary that we examine our ideas and that we become aware of the actions that are based on those ideas, and the results produced by the actions. We have a causative sequence here: idea —> action —> consequence. Could most of the problems in the world be due to the possibility that most people are insufficiently aware of the consequences of their ideas? What about personal problems?
In See, I Told You So Rush discusses education, particularly so-called "Outcome-Based Education." Equality of outcome is one of the ideas of this pernicious form of brainwashing. Individual achievement is no longer rewarded. Individual failure tends to be downplayed or ignored. Mediocrity is the consequence.
What's rewarded gets done. "Outcome-Based Education" essentially rewards failure and mediocrity. So that's the consequence: failure and mediocrity.
• Maximum individual freedom to create and achieve. America was founded on the principle of maximum individual freedom. It was this individual freedom that made America the greatest country in the world. The more choices individuals have, the better their chances of success, and the greater the nation. Maximum individual freedom is an idea that has the consequence of maximum health, wealth, and happiness.
• Restraining government rather than individuals. The U.S. Constitution is a contract that binds those who swear to uphold and protect it. Its intention was to very specifically lay down what government officials were allowed to do and what not. The purpose was maximum individual freedom. Unfortunately, with the support of the Supreme Court, government officials have for all intents and purposes subverted the Constitution virtually out of existence.
Over the years government officials have used all manner of ideas to subvert the Constitution and expand the role of government. For example, President Lincoln said that government should only do for the people what they can't do for themselves. There's nothing like that in the Constitution. The Constitution says government may do this and this, and nothing else. Lincoln's idea has had the consequence of expanding government and reducing individual freedom.
Lincoln essentially implied that people were not smart enough to do certain things, therefore government had to do them. Rush, on the other hand says "that the individual is smart enough to solve his own problems and does not need to depend on big government for resolution of all his problems."
The USA is the greatest nation, not because Americans are inherently superior, but because its government was founded on principles which seek to allow maximum individual achievement.
• Government authority to secure law and order. Rush believes in a limited government with the necessary authority to secure law and order. But if you examine the crime statistics, you might wonder if government has the competence to secure law and order! Many people (like President Lincoln) seem to have the idea that government somehow has magical powers to do what ordinary individuals can't do. I believe this idea needs to be questioned. After all, government just consists of individuals - and, maybe, these individuals are not the most competent.
• Military strength. Rush believes that military strength is necessary to secure peace between nations.
• Social utopia cannot be achieved through government handouts and socialistic distributions of wealth. The underlying idea here is that if people are given handouts, they become more dependent and helpless. It's like the parable of the fish. If you give a hungry man a fish, you may help him in the short run, but in the long run you harm him. That's why it's better to teach him how to fish. But, unfortunately government doesn't know how to fish. They never learned how to fish. They live off the handouts given to them in the form of "taxes." Maybe Rush's principle should be expanded to: social utopia cannot be achieved through handouts to government.
• Strong, wholesome family values. Rush believes in traditional American values: Human life is sacred; Morality emanates from God; God has placed man in dominion over nature; Government cannot instill values, but can eliminate them, particularly through "well-intentioned but destructive government programs."
The chapter "The Problem with Big Government" indicates how big government literally destroys families. For a history of how governments have traditionally destroyed families, refer to the book The Subversive Family by Ferdinand Mount.
Rush writes:
"For the record, authoritarian and totalitarian regimes - be they fascist or communist in nature - have always sought to destroy the traditional family unit by severing the bonds between parents and their children, thereby increasing the power of the government."
• Liberalism poisons the soul. Modern-day liberalism is like a disease or an addiction that literally has the power to destroy the character of the person who falls under its spell. The liberal answer is always more powerful government and higher taxes.
It's necessary to indicate here that the term "liberalism" has been corrupted. "Classical liberalism" essentially means the kind of freedoms Rush advocates. Modern American "liberalism" is a kind of combination of fascism and socialism. Big-daddy government that tries to regulate everything is outright fascism. Big tax-and-spend "welfare" government that tries to "protect" everyone from cradle to grave is pure socialism. Generally, American "liberals" are about as illiberal as can be!
• Modern American socialism. In Chapter 13 of See, I Told You So Rush writes:
"The only thing preventing the radical transformation of our great country from capitalism to abject socialism is the absolute incompetence of those now running it.
What do I mean by this? Well, there's a philosophy - statist, anti-American, anti-capitalist at its core - that has assumed the reins of political and cultural power in this country. Its adherents run both wings of the White House, both houses of Congress, the entire federal bureaucracy, the press, the entertainment industry, academia, the educational establishment, and just about every other important institution that frames the debate on the great issues of our age and are responsible for policy-making.
Yet, thankfully - and this is one of the reasons I remain optimistic - this radical philosophy, while certainly making important inroads in the shaping of public policy, has largely failed to be implemented. It will continue to fail because those responsible for its implementation simply don't get it. They just don't understand how the world really works. They are theoreticians, eggheads, pseudo-intellectuals, and policy wonks. They have, for the most part, never held real jobs outside of government in their lives. Therefore, count your blessings; they are ill-equipped to achieve their goals." [emphasis added]
Essentially, what Rush is saying is that America at all important levels is governed, controlled, and dominated by anti-American socialists - but fortunately they are too incompetent to achieve their goals. Maybe there's a degree of wishful thinking here. In Chapter 21 of See, I Told You So Rush writes:
"I have often characterized President Clinton's economic rhetoric and programs as socialistic. I do not use that word lightly. I'll admit that America's gravitation toward socialism has been long-term and precedes the arrival of Bill and Hillary in the White House. Economist Milton Friedman recently observed that "in 1950, total government spending, federal, state, and local, amounted to less than 30 percent of national income; in 1992, to nearly 45. In addition, government-mandated expenditures by individuals and businesses have multiplied manifold... The U.S. is today more than half socialist, compared to perhaps a third in 1950." And consider this: According to the Institute for Policy Innovation in Louisville, Texas, there are now more people working in government in America (19.2 million) than in the U.S. manufacturing industry (18.1 million)."
The undeniable fact is that the socialists have been gradually implementing their policies over the centuries. If you examine the ten planks of The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels, you'll realize the extent to which socialism has been implemented in America. This is covered in detail by my (Frederick Mann's) book Wake Up America! The Dynamics of Human Power.
The Clinton health-care plan is essentially an attempt to nationalize the health-care business. If implemented, it would be a major step in America's march toward socialism.
• Early American socialism and freedom. To further illustrate the principle that ideas have consequences, let's examine the "socialist experiment" of America's first pilgrims. The following article by Al Bellerue appeared in The Arizona Republic of November 26, 1992 under the title 'They should set corne every man for his own perticular':
"Just under four centuries ago in England, in defiance of the "law of the land," men and women met secretly for religious worship. These Separatists refused to accept the nationally mandated Church of England, preferring free association in independent churches.
These actions, which followed individual dictates of conscience, cost them dearly in numerous government reprisals. One of their number, a man named William Bradford, later wrote: "Some were taken and clapt in prison, others had their houses besett and watcht night and day, and the most were faine to flie and lieve their houses and habitations and the means of their livelihood."
Some fled to Holland where they found a measure of freedom. During this period of persecution, these Separatists conceived a plan to form a colony in the New World. By 1620, a little ship named the Speedwell, loaded with these future colonists, left Holland bound for Southhampton, England, where it was joined by another ship loaded with fellow Separatists and other emigrants.
Twice these ships set sail for the New World and twice they were forced to turn back to port. The unseaworthy Speedwell was finally abandoned and on Sept. 6, 1620, those who were still determined to form a free colony boarded the remaining ship - the Mayflower - and set sail for the New World and a new life.
After months of suffering and death aboard ship, in December of 1620 these pilgrims made their historic landing on Plymouth Rock in what is today known as Plymouth Harbor, Mass. The founding of the Plymouth Colony resulted in much rejoicing among the colonists for it was thought that their sufferings and hardships were nearly over - but the worst was yet to come.
Prior to embarking from England it had been necessary for the pilgrims to solicit financial assistance from colonizing speculators in London. In return for financial aid from these London promoters, the pilgrims had contractually agreed to enforce a system of "ownership of property in common" in Plymouth Colony.
With the adoption of the Mayflower Compact, which was based upon this concept - communalization of property - came the creation of one of the first share-the-wealth cooperative colonies on American shores. The founding of this commonwealth wherein private property ownership and free enterprise were prohibited was known as "the commone course and condition" and it nearly resulted in the destruction of the entire colony.
From the first Thanksgiving of 1621 to the hopeless winter of 1622, dwindling food supplies led to starvation and death of more than half the colonists. Communal farming could not produce sufficient food to feed the settlers. Throughout the commune there was dissentation, disharmony and irresponsibility which penalized initiative and encouraged dependency. With the prospect of death-by-starvation confronting them, the pilgrims saw the reason for their failure.
In Of Pilmouth Plantation, Gov. William Bradford, one of the original Separatists, writes: "So they begane to thinke how they might raise as much corne as they could... that they might not languish in misere. At last, after much debate of things, the governor gave way that they should set corne every man for his own perticular... This had very good success for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corne was planted than other waise would have bene."
In the spring of 1623 the colonists abandoned communal enterprise in favor of private enterprise thereby establishing individual responsibility which resulted in the abundance exhibited in the great Thanksgiving feast of 1623. Though the lesson had been costly, the pilgrims had learned that communalization leads only to destruction and death whereas freedom or private property ownership results in constructive life.
In analyzing this lesson, Gov. Bradford wrote: "The experience that has had in this commone course and condition, tried sundrie years, and that amongst Godly and sober men, may well evince the Vanitie of the conceite of Plato's and other ancients, applauded by some of later times - that the taking away of propertie, and bringing into commone wealth would make them happy and florishing; as if they were wiser than God."
In view of a similar economic disaster bringing down the Soviet Union, and some similar economic trends in the rest of the world, it's high time to echo Gov. Bradford's words that they should "set corne every man for his own perticular.""
The ideas of socialism bring about the consequences of laziness, irresponsibility, conflict, poverty, starvation, and death. The ideas of private property, free enterprise, and capitalism, on the other hand, bring about the consequences of industriousness, responsibility, harmony, happiness, health, and wealth.
In Chapter 6 of See, I Told You So, Rush covers this early American history in much more detail. He writes, "... the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the "Great Puritan Migration."" Rush emphasizes that the freedom aspects of this early American history has been expunged from school textbooks. According to Rush:
"... [O]ne of those attracted to the New World by the success of Plymouth was Thomas Hooker, who established his own community in Connecticut - the first full-fledged constitutional community and perhaps the most free society the world had ever known. Hooker's community was governed by the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which established strict limits on the powers of government. So revolutionary and successful was this idea that Massachusetts was inspired to adopt its Body of Liberties, which included ninety-eight separate protections of individual rights, including: "no taxation without representation," "due process of law," "trial by a jury of peers," and prohibitions against "cruel and unusual punishment."
Does all that sound familiar? It should. These are ideas and concepts that led directly to the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights."
• Private property. Walter Williams is an economist who has on several occasions hosted Rush's radio talk-show. Walter is a staunch advocate of private property, free enterprise, and capitalism. The following extract is from an article by Walter that appeared in The Arizona Republic of February 27, 1993 under the title "Civilizing values threatened; we're courting barbarism":
"The essence of human history is the ongoing struggle between barbarians and more civilized people. You say, "I might go along with that, but what's your definition of a barbarian?" It's easy. In principle, barbarians are people who have little respect for private property, whereas civilized people honor and respect private property. That's why theft qualifies as a barbaric act. Since we own ourselves, rape and murder are also barbaric, since they violate private property.
People are not born civilized. To the contrary, they are born barbarians caring little for the rights and property of others. The role of the family is to civilize these imps before we set them loose on society, a challenging job as any mother and father will tell you. But parents alone cannot do the complete job; it requires other inputs that we call institutions, community and values.
Let's look at what's been happening. When I was a child during the 1940s, the "vexing" problems teachers and principals faced were: chewing gum, talking in line, passing notes in class and going up the down stairs. Compare that to today's school problems of knives and guns, rape, murder and serious assaults by students on teachers and other students.
There are two reasons for this. First, we've undermined civilizing authority through laws inhibiting strict discipline. Just as important, there has been a decline in the teaching of moral absolutes and a rise in the worship of moral relativism - if it feels good, do it. Since the Bible deals with moral absolutes, liberals are hostile to any biblical influence in schools.
But it's not only Bible lessons rejected by today's liberals. They reject the moral absolutes found in the childhood stories I read such as The Little Red Hen, The Ant and the Grasshopper, The Tortoise and the Hare and Aesop's Fables. Those stories taught the moral superiority of hard work, thrift and perseverance. Liberals probably condemn the little red hen, who wouldn't share her bread with the barnyard bums, as a racist or a selfish Reaganite.
In the lexicon of barbarians, no word is as important as entitlement. It covers up the violation of private property for those too squeamish to face facts. An ordinary thief thinks he's entitled to your property and takes it. However, such direct action risks imprisonment. The more prudent tactic is to convince a congressman that you are entitled to the property of others, and he'll use his paid henchmen to get it for you. That way, you're just a recipient of stolen property rather than a thief, but nonetheless a barbarian for your disregard for private property.
Looked at this way, most of our nation's problems are a result of barbarism. The founders of this nation appreciated this.
Our Constitution promotes moral absolutes. Its strict interpretation would mean that two-thirds of the federal budget would be found unconstitutional. That, by the way, is why U.S. Supreme Court nominees who are seen as strict constructionists are pilloried by liberals, the news media and many congressmen. Can you imagine what would have happened to Clarence Thomas had he suggested there was no constitutional authority for most of what government does?"
Rush also sees private property as a solution to environmental problems. The worst pollution almost always occurs on government-owned property. Private property owners tend to be much more responsible for the environmental quality of their property and have a much better track record than government. Some of the worst pollution in the world has occurred in Eastern Europe on government-owned property.
• Why profits are good and why they work. Some time ago I visited Albuquerque, NM. On the eastern outskirts of the city is the longest cable car in the world. I took the ride to the top of the mountain. As I was going up I wondered: "Why is this cable car here? What useful purpose does it really serve? Why is it possible for people to spend time and money riding up and down the mountain in this cable car? How can they afford it?"
There's something very important here to think about. The reason we can do all these things - build and ride in cable cars, go to the movies, play golf, watch football, etc. - that on the face of it don't seem very productive, is that someone is producing more than they consume. Most fundamentally, profit is the difference between what's being produced and what's being consumed - surplus production. Therefore profit is a very noble value. All our buildings, roads, communication systems, computers, and other manifestations of advanced civilization came about because some people produced more than they consumed; they made a profit.
Unfortunately, it's also the profit of the productive that makes parasitic government possible. In general, government produces less than it consumes; therefore can't make a profit; therefore has to take the profit of others in the form of taxes.
There's absolutely no reason for people in government to consume more than they produce - except that they are lazy, inefficient, and ineffective. If people in government were hard-working, efficient, and effective, they would produce more than they consume and make a profit - like normal human beings.
The only real reason why taxes seem to be "necessary" to keep government going is that they consume more than they produce. To justify its taxes - essentially theft - government has to brainwash people into believing that "profit is bad," the "profit-motive is evil," and accuse the highly productive of "profiteering."
Government is essentially parasitic, consuming the surplus production of others. What you reward gets done more. Consider the possibility that by giving government part of your profit or surplus production, you reward them for being lazy, inefficient, and ineffective. And the more you reward them, the lazier, less efficient, and less effective they become. So their taxes keep on increasing year after year.
Another major implication of surplus production or profit is that the economy isn't a zero-sum game. It's an expanding pie. So the fact that you make a profit means you're expanding the pie. Government contracts the pie through its "deficit production" or loss, and stealing the surplus pie of the productive in the form of taxes. To disguise their theft they have to brainwash the productive with phrases like "paying your fair share." If people in government really believed in "paying your fair share," why don't they become twice as productive as the rest of us, reverse the taxing process, and pay us "our fair share" because we are only half as productive as they are?
Because the American economy is an expanding pie, rather than a zero-sum game, you can enjoy guilt-free success by producing more than you consume; you don't have to "steal" success. Great prosperity is available to you - if you are taught how to utilize the available opportunities, how to believe in yourself, how to be self-sufficient, and how to escape government dependency.
• Corrupt government. Rush exposes a great deal of corruption in government. Congress is corrupt because they pass bad checks, are in the pockets of special interests, secretly vote themselves pay raises in the middle of the night, and exempt themselves from the laws they pass.
Bill Clinton is a compulsive liar. He is a proponent of the "politics of envy"; he promotes class warfare. A seven-page section of See, I Told You So consists only of a collection of lies told by Clinton.
Public schools are breeding grounds for destructive ideas. They force degraded textbooks on their victims. What they produce is the "dumbing down of America." They brainwash their victims to act on their feelings rather than on reason. They advocate doing things because they "feel good." They punish achievement and reward failure. They brainwash their victims with the false belief that competition is bad. The fact is that competition is one of the strongest motivators to become the best you can be and to realize your potential.
Government is corrupt because they pretend to have "good intentions" while producing poor results in practically every activity they get involved in. The government's track record for solving social problems is abysmal - despite spending more than $3.5 trillion on social problems since the "Great Society" programs of the 1960s - the only government program that has solved or improved the problem it was created to solve is the military. In two other areas Rush also thinks government might do a reasonable job: the U.S. Patent Office and NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). Rush has asked millions of listeners to tell him in which areas government does a good job. These three seem to be the only candidates.
In general, we can surmise that government creates the very problems they claim to "fight" to solve. They use political demagoguery to manufacture "crises" out of thin air. Then they pass legislation, create new bureaucracies, and increase taxes to "fight" the "crises." And the more they "fight," the more they bloat their bureaucracies, the more tax money they waste, the worse the "crises" become. So we have a crime problem and a drug problem and a homelessness problem - and the more government "fights" these problems, the worse they get. Maybe we would have an infinitely better world if government handled only the military, the U.S. Patent Office, and NASA - and nothing else!
• No country has ever taxed itself into prosperity. Rush thinks the level of taxation we now have in America is a form of slavery. He writes quite scathingly about taxes:
"Taxes go up on everybody. And taxes have to go up on the middle class 'cause that's where the bulk of the money is. So you're taxed - you don't even know how much. You don't have any idea. Consider the sales tax you pay, the gasoline tax, your state and city taxes. When you add all those up, it's no wonder you can't afford to send your kids to college. Instead of supporting your own kids, you're supporting a giant bloated pig in Washington, D.C., and you're just trying to get your face into the nipple so that you can get some of it back. We've all become a bunch of little piglets trying to get to the mother pig and then trying to squeeze in and get our share.
... The poor in this country are the biggest piglets at the mother pig and her nipples. The poor feed off the largesse of this government and they give nothing back... over half the population receives some kind of government check... We've been encouraging poverty by subsidizing the increasing numbers of the poor. And Democrats love giving money away to the poor because it makes them dependent upon the Democrats and helps to ensure their reelection...
I have come up with a new national symbol for the United States. I think we need to junk the eagle and come up with a symbol that is more appropriate for the kind of government we have today. We need to replace the eagle with a huge sow that has a lot of nipples and a bunch of fat little piglets hanging on them, all trying to suckle as much nourishment from them as possible.
Of course, the problem is that while the sow is large she is near death. She's not fat and flourishing, she's emaciated. A lot of the piglets have dropped off and are running around lost because they can't get any more nourishment.
This symbol would have many uses. Can't you just see it painted on Air Force One? Imagine that every time a congressman speaks, that symbol would be on the podium in front of him. Truth in advertising."
• The free market. Rush begins Chapter 21 of See I Told You So by quoting Albert Einstein:
"It's no accident that capitalism has brought with it progress, not merely in production but also in knowledge. Egoism and knowledge are, alas, stronger forces than public spirit and sense of duty. In Russia, they say, it is impossible to get a decent piece of bread. Perhaps I'm over pessimistic concerning state and other forms of communal enterprise, but I expect little good from them. Bureaucracy is the death of any achievement. I've seen and experienced too many dreadful warnings, even in comparatively model Switzerland. I'm inclined to view that the state can only be of use to industry as a limiting and regulative force."
Competition is an essential element, not only of the free market, but of life in general. Competition makes you do a better job - otherwise a competitor will put you out of business. Competition imposes market discipline. The free market is the arbiter of what is the best for the consumer. Competition is simply part of life - like air. To outlaw competition is a violation of human nature. With competition goes freedom of consumer choice. Every purchase in a free market is an economic vote.
Eliminating competition amounts to the disenfranchisement of the economic voters or consumers. Competition makes the best companies, products, and services survive, while putting the worst out of business. It rewards the best and punishes the worst. What is rewarded gets done more. Notice that in practically every area government gets involved in they outlaw competition. That's because deep down they know they are lazy, inefficient, and ineffective - so they don't want to compete with the hard-working, efficient, and effective producers of the free market. (Unfortunately, there are people in the private sector who "learn" from government. So they bribe lawmakers on the take to pass special-interest legislation to protect them from "unfair competition." As a result, some of these private sector people become lazy, inefficient, and ineffective like government - at great cost to consumers.)
Command economies and central planning have never worked because they eliminate competition which is the discipline of the free market. Simply, it means you can do a lousy job and survive and prosper because you have the blessing of big-daddy government. No one is allowed to compete with you and compel you to do a better job. In a free market the consumer votes with his money to determine what shall be produced. The consumer is king. In a command economy the bureaucrats have to guess what needs to be produced. They usually guess wrong. Result: embarrassingly huge surpluses of items nobody wants and horrendous shortages of the things people want most - picture the empty stores and long lines of the former Soviet Union.
Rush emphasizes the power of the freedom of the press. He decided what to write in his books. Nobody could dictate to him what to write. The fact that we still have a free press in America justifies our hope for reversing the fascist-socialist tide and creating a free America. To do that we have to become individually more successful. As Rush says, "for the country to fulfill its potential, you need individuals to be the best they can be - not the government taking care of people."
Individual Success Principles
• Hard work. To succeed intense, dedicated hard work is necessary. For most people, success builds slowly; it doesn't occur overnight.
• Concentrate on opportunities for success. "[S]uccess breeds new opportunities for success which must be concentrated on." First, you can learn from every success. What did you do that worked? Why did it work? The person that you succeeded with may have many contacts he can refer you to, thereby opening up other opportunities.
• Being yourself; doing it your own way. Rush says that his "big break in life and business came in 1984 in Sacramento." For the first time in his life (on a radio talk show" he could be himself and do it his own way.
Originally, Rush didn't think his show would do well, because he's a conservative. But to his delight he found that there were millions of Americans who shared his views.
Rush is a strong believer in the pursuit of excellence; the attitude of being the best you can be; and discovering that you are special.
• Result-consciousness. Rush focuses consciously, deliberately, and intensely on the result he wants to achieve and what he has to do to achieve that result. He writes, "my success is determined by how many listeners I have"; "my show comes first"; and, "The primary purpose of callers on my show is to make me look good, not to allow a forum for the public to make speeches." It is very clear to Rush what the results are he wants to achieve and what he has to do to achieve these results.
• Confidence in the power of the individual. Rush is a great believer in the power of the individual. As individuals we can rise above the society we live in. We don't have to let the socialists drag us down into their quagmire. We can always move ahead with optimism and good cheer. We can assume personal responsibility for our lives. We can practice self-reliance, self-discipline, and self-restraint. People can think for themselves - you included! Discover your personal power; you may be capable of much more than you believe. See Report #TL10: How to Achieve and Increase Personal Power.
• Think for yourself. Rush says that he has:
"... [A]lways been concerned that too many people are credulous, too willing to accept all of the propaganda that is showered on them daily by the media and politicians. That's why I try to provoke my audience into thinking for themselves, and not blindly accepting all they are spoon-fed by the media, myself included. How do I do this? Psychologically. Each Friday I urge people to pursue their weekend with reckless abandon, and not to worry about keeping up with the news, because I will do it for them. They need only tune in my show on Monday and I will tell them about any important events which took place over the weekend and, as a bonus, will also tell them what to think.
... My little offer to think for people motivates them to do just the opposite: to think for themselves. Kind of like Ross Perot saying he never wanted the presidency..." [emphasis added]
Thinking for yourself means questioning everything Rush says - and everything I (Frederick Mann) say.
• Playing to win. Rush quotes Danny Ainge, a Phoenix Suns basketball player, whom he describes as "a hard-nosed competitor who understands the dynamics of winning":
"There's a huge difference between showing up, playing, having fun and doing well, and really playing to win. It's an entirely different mind-set. It's not a physical thing. It has nothing to do with athletics. It has to do with attitude." [emphasis added]
Rush himself is the perfect example of someone with the winning attitude. He writes:
"... [R]eporters frequently approach me and ask, "Did you ever expect to rise to the top the way you have?"
My answer is always the same: "Yes, of course. I was striving for it. I didn't move to New York just to be in the top five. My eye was always on Number One." The fact of the matter is that I've always been that way, ever since I was a little kid. I was never intimidated by the prospect of failure. I knew that if I missed the mark, I could live with myself. What I couldn't live with, however, was the prospect of not having taken my best shot at the brass ring."
You will find other powerful success principles in the other Build Freedom materials at this website, such as Report #TL15: How to Achieve Ultimate Success. I believe that if you apply these principles it becomes virtually impossible for you to not succeed in a big way. You have the ability to become the best person you can be and to achieve at least spectacular success...
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