Friday, Sep 30, 2011 at 3:14 PM EDT
Glenn had quite an interesting caller on radio today. A long time fan who has listened to Glenn since 2002 called in to say he sympathized with the Occupy Wall Street protesters. And he’s from Texas of all places. Why did the caller sympathize with these left wing, anti-corporate, anti-cop crowd? Get the answer and the debate that followed on radio today in the clip above!
Get the full transcript of this interesting conversation below:
GLENN: We have a caller on the phone that – on our phone that listens to this show that says, You know what? I think the guys that occupy Wall Street, I think they make some sense. Wow. We talk to him, now.
(Music playing.)
GLENN: And he’s from Texas.
PAT: It’s not possible.
GLENN: Derrick? Derrick?
CALLER: Yeah, Glenn. Thanks for the big intro, man.
GLENN: You’re welcome. How are you?
CALLER: I’m good. I’ve been listening to your show since 2002.
GLENN: Okay.
CALLER: So, yeah, I’ve been listening a very long time. Always enjoyed it.
GLENN: And are you – and you are a born and bred Texan?
CALLER: I am, indeed. I’m probably more conservative than you are, believe it or not.
GLENN: And you’re in – and you’re in – you’re not in –
PAT: Austin.
GLENN: Austin?
CALLER: No.
PAT: Where do you live? Where in Texas?
CALLER: I’m actually about 80 miles east of Austin, in the own of Fredericksburg.
PAT: Uh-huh.
GLENN: Okay.
CALLER: Did I say east? I went west. Sorry.
GLENN: All right. Go ahead.
CALLER: Okay. Here’s my thinking on this. I think you’re kind of looping them all into one basket. I’ve been watching some news programs at night and I see some signs they’re holding up that make sense. There’s one in particular that caught my eye. It said student loan equals slavery, student loan debt equals slavery and that is a –
PAT: And that made sense to you?
GLENN: Hold on just a second. Let him speak. Go ahead, Derrick.
CALLER: Debt equals slavery. Look it up in the Bible.
PAT: Okay. Well –
GLENN: Hang on. Let the man speak, Pat.
PAT: He’s done speaking.
GLENN: No, he’s not. Go ahead. Go ahead.
CALLER: Here is the – I think the fundamental issue of this whole thing is that some of these banks that these guys are protesting on Wall Street are the same ones that received the TARP bailout.
GLENN: Yes.
CALLER: I think they are frustrated because they can’t find work, they’ve been saddled with this huge amount of debt that these banks have loaned them, obviously it takes two to tango, but at the same time, these banks did receive these huge bailouts. Some of the students definitely want a bailout for themselves, but, you know, we’re in a credit – we live in a credit-driven society and I don’t know when the transition took place. I stayed at a hotel with my wife in San Antonio about a year ago and in the lobby was this huge mural that was painted in the depression and the words written on that mural were: Thrift is the pathway to wealth.
Now, sometime between then and now we have gone to a credit-driven society. Now, who benefits on a credit-driven society?
GLENN: Well, I would say anybody who anyone who uses credit and makes the decision to use credit. I would say that.
CALLER: Okay. Well, can you actually get wealthy with credit?
GLENN: Well, you can, yeah. You can. Overwhelming debt, no. The scriptures would be right that overwhelming debt would make you a slave.
CALLER: Sure.
GLENN: But, no, you can – you can borrow money to be able to start your own business.
CALLER: (Inaudible) yourself.
GLENN: Yes, in a realistic sort of way. Credit is –
CALLER: Sure.
GLENN: Credit is not evil. I’m sure. I’m not going to go down the Sharia law with you. Credit is not evil. It is the love of money or the complete disregard for responsible debt and responsibility for that debt after you’ve taken it.
PAT: May I? May I ask a question?
GLENN: Yeah, you can ask a question. Hang on just a second. Derrick, let Pat speak.
PAT: And yes, it is, but slavery is not voluntary. So – so, when you volunteer for slavery, that’s a whole different kind of slavery. You’re not – nobody is forcing these people to get into debt. No one – no one, Derrick, is saddled with debt. A horse is saddled because a horse has no choice. Nobody asks the choice, Hey, could I put this on you? You get into the agreement with the bank yourself. Now, if you’re out of control and you get so much debt that you can’t live your life in a decent way, that is your responsibility.
GLENN: Now, let me go here on something on the bank bailout. You said these banks received TARP. No, sir.
CALLER: Sure.
GLENN: Some of them did. Many of them were forced by the government to take TARP, just as they were also – just as they were also forced to live within the parameters that the government said that you must give loans to these people who cannot afford it. The government –
CALLER: Sure
GLENN: — is the one that is really responsible for much of this and I’m sorry, as much as – I mean, I just said to my daughter just last weekend, we had quite a discussion. Impersonally paying for their college educations. I have no problem paying for college educations. However, I told them, You know, gang, we are spending a lot of money on your college education. What exactly do you think you’re going to get in return for that money and that college education? Now, I will tell you that my older kids are just about out of college now. So, it’s too late for them, but my younger kids, I’m sorry, I am not paying for a college education that is this much money. It’s insanity. We –
CALLER: Congratulations.
GLENN: Excuse me?
CALLER: I think that’s a great idea. Why has it gone up so high.
GLENN: You would have to ask not the banks that, sir. You would have to ask the universities that.
STU: That’s the point here.
GLENN: You notice that the ones that nobody’s protesting against are the universities.
STU: Yep. Who are the least – who is the least guilty person party here in this? The least guilty party is the bank. You have somebody who is asking for money and agreed to a contract to pay it back and is not able to do so.
PAT: Yeah.
STU: And you have a university that keeps jacking the price up over and over and over again way beyond inflation, way beyond even healthcare increase in cost and, yes, sir, the bank is on its –
CALLER: It’s because of government intervention.
GLENN: Yeah. So, why are they not – why are they, then, not at the White House and Congress? Why are they in front of the banks? If the banks –
CALLER: Well, they –
GLENN: Excuse me, sir. If the banks are forcing people and they are engaging in predatory loans where they are luring people in and saying, you’ve got – oh, don’t worry about it. Now, that’s exactly what the government says the banks did, but I’m sorry, sir, the banks did not do that. Barnie Frank, Chris Dodd, those in Congress and those in the White House past and present, are the ones that did that, not the banks. I am not sticking up for the banks. I don’t think the banks – I think a lot of these guys – I think a lot of these guys are criminal in their negligence on what they’re doing. I think when it comes to CEO’s, you can make a point, if they can’t understand it, how could anyone understand it? If they don’t know how to make it work, how could – how would they – why would they engage? It’s black magic. You want to talk to me about the banks in that way? We’ll do it. But don’t talk to me about the banks on student loans. You took out a loan. You owe that money. You took out a loan. You got an education. They never promised you a job. It was an education. Now, what are you going to do with that education? You’re now going to take that valuable education and say, I’m going to destroy everything with that education? You’re out of your mind. I’m going to make others pay for my education? I’m going to destroy the system that allowed this society to have those universities? No, sir. No, sir. That’s irresponsible and, quite honestly, check your Bible. I believe that is evil.
STU: Still on the Bible here. We’re still in Bible country.
PAT: Yeah.
STU: Glenn, the other thing is the universities could have never charged the prices they pay if it wasn’t for the government making it so they can get low interest loans and funneling our tax dollars to these universities.
GLENN: And telling the – the universities are the ones who are teaching our children that capitalism is bad. The university – excuse me. But where are all these economists in? All these people that put it all together, they’re all the big university think tanks. The universities are the root of the problem, not all of the universities, not all of the professors, not higher education, not books, not learning, not – not the book from Karl Marx, but the university system that has been set up. It is absolutely out of control.
You tell me how somebody’s going to pay off a loan of $70,000 every year, $70,000 a year for four, six years? That’s insane. And nobody questions that. No. Instead, we just give these universities more money. We just take our tax dollars and give them more. Nobody – not once have I heard anybody in government talk about – they’ll talk about healthcare. Oh, they’ll talk about healthcare. They’ll talk about how things are in education. Not enough people are getting an education. Do you know why they’re not? Because it’s $40,000 a year. That’s why. And now let me ask you, what exactly have they changed at these universities where they have to have a 500% increase in cost? Why? Cloward and Piven were teaching at universities. You want to – you really want to collapse the system? Do you know what you do? If you – think of this. If you’re a revolutionary and you know I’ve got to get the youth, I have to get the youth behind it and I also have to overwhelm the system and collapse the system, what do you do? You make sure that nobody gets any kind of outside learning. You make sure that there’s no apprenticeship programs. You make sure that everybody’s a dummy unless you went to college and a good college and an expensive college and then you – once you have that foundation laid, then you just keep increasing the cost, 100% this year, 100% next year, 100% the next year and the cost becomes so crippling but what you do is you keep those interest rates down, you keep everything and you spread it over so nobody really notices until it’s so far out of control that no one can afford it anymore, no one can afford it and it doesn’t make sense to have this higher education and then what do you do? Then you tell all of the students, don’t pay your student loans, don’t pay it. It’s the bank’s fault. That’s how you sew the seeds of revolution and I contend that that’s exactly what the revolutionaries, the Marxists, the hippies from the 1960′s, the Bill Ayers of our universities did knowingly. Why aren’t you marching against the universities? Why is it only the bank?
STU: That’s a great point. I mean, you know, over and over again this happens and the market would not support the cost of these colleges without the government intervention. So, you have both of them working together.
GLENN: And when did that happen? And would you look that up? When did the United States really get into financing universities and financing student loans? When did that happen? Look it up. I have no idea. There’s a question usually I don’t – it’s not smart to ask a question you don’t know the answer to, but I’ll bet you it was in the 1970′s
STU: The one thing we do know is it’s been increasing and increasing and increasing, again it’s the – it’s like the racist argument. It’s like you can’t be against giving more money to colleges because then you’re against children. And, Glenn, correct me if I’m wrong because you think about this stuff several steps out farther than I do, but it’s like is it – no offense to the caller who just called in and made that point, but aren’t the people who are at occupy Wall Street, the guy we talked about who identified himself as a Bolivian socialist, aren’t people like that depending on guys like that caller, the mainstream person who just says, well, that’s a pretty good point, we should go along with that?
GLENN: This is why I have worked tirelessly to tell you in advance, how many times, maybe you’ll remember it now, how many times have I said, and it will all make sense. It will all make sense. They’re going to scoop up so many people and they’ll do it – so many people, because, if – look. This is – we have been thought – thank you, Edward Bernays, we have been taught a certain way to think. We have been taught to be consumers. Sir, don’t talk to me about the banks. Talk to me about Edward Bernays. Talk to me about the propaganda system that the progressives built that took us from a country in their own words, a country of – that went and focused on its needs and, instead, turned into a country that focused on its wants. That’s our problem.
Here is – here is a group of people that have planned this and they are going to scoop up all of the people who want, want a way out. Do you know why we believed – well, everybody believed we can have everything, we can have everything. We wanted to believe that. We knew it was not true. Social Security, we know that’s not true, but we accept the lies, the blatant lies. Oh, well, this doesn’t really have any problem. We accept that. Why? Because if we don’t, it requires us to think and behave differently and we don’t want to. We like our life. We don’t want to. Read Harry Truman. Read what happened to Harry Truman in 1919 when he and his partner went broke. Why? Because the progressive government of Woodrow Wilson drove our economy into a Cliff. He went broke. He would – he refused, refused to go bankrupt. Instead, he worked it out with all of his creditors and he paid his last payment in 1939. It took him 20 years to pay off his debt. Don’t talk to me about these banks. You don’t owe them. You’re not a slave to the bank. There is such a thing called bankruptcy, but is there anything called personal responsibility? You made the choice to go to school and take the loan. They never promised you anything but an education. Now, you want to go to them and say, I think I got a crappy ass education, I’ll stand with you on that one, brother. They indoctrinated you. They’re indoctrinating our children now, but don’t tell me about a loan that you took out. I understand. And if you can’t honestly pay it, if you are behind the 8 ball, you do everything you can, you work at every job you can to pay it off, but if you cannot make that, there’s something called bankruptcy.
Now, a lot of people are now saying bankruptcy, that’s your first option. It is your last option if we are a people of merit. But not anymore, because we have been taught to blame someone else. No. No.
By the way, thank you, Stu. Federal cash to students for college expanded greatly in 1965 as part of The Great Society. What a surprise. Back in a minute.
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