RUSH: I want to circle back to this college scandal business. I’ve had a day to ponder this. I have had a day to inform myself on it. I tell you, it is just astounding to me. Now, I want to remind everybody: This isn’t new, parents trying to get their kids into elite universities. There’s nothing new. Normally the way you do it is you make a $2.5 million donation and then the university establishes, you know, the “I’m a Very Important Liberal Wing” of the law school or some such thing and that’s how they get the kid in there.
I don’t know why these Hollywood people didn’t just do that, except that might have cost $2.5 million and these are a bunch of tied wads. They were trying to get this done for anywhere from $15,000 to $500,000, whereas if you start endowing your own, like, Felicity Huffman-William H. Macy Wing of the Sex Education Building at Harvard, that might take $2.5 million that they don’t want to part with.
So they might have been following the money trail and trying to spend as little as they could here. But I want to focus on the “why” here, because I ran across a piece by Ben Shapiro at the Daily Wire. Now, we, as it just so happens… Not “we.” I am interviewing Mr. Shapiro right after the program today for the next issue of The Limbaugh Letter. Shapiro’s piece is: “Famous Actresses Paid Bundles of Money to Bribe Their Kids’ Way into College. Here’s Why.”
Well, Shapiro went to Harvard. He got into Harvard Law. The story he tells in this piece is incredible, and it confirms much of what I have shared with you in terms of the purpose of the Ivy League. The Ivy League is the feeder network for government people. It’s the feeder network for people who end up in the Washington bureaucracy, the deep state, the administrative state. The Ivy League and elite universities — not just the ivies, ’cause Stanford’s a part of this; USC is a part of this.
But these elite universities are the feeder networks — the training grounds, if you will — the educational camps for training and producing people to fill spots in the administrative state. Now, the administrative state comprises not just bureaucrats. The administrative state is made up of media people. The administrative state is made up of lobbyists. The administrative state, the deep state is made up of lawyers. It’s not just bureaucrats who are making G14 or G13 salary. It’s a tremendous number of people who make up the administrative state.
The administrative state, folks, is essentially what’s gone wrong with our country. The administrative state is what is robbing the United States of its democratic ideals, of its democratic founding. The administrative state (some people call it “the bureaucracy”), what do they do? They issue regulations. They’re not elected. In many cases, they’re anonymous. Most Americans have no idea who they are.
They work any number of places from cabinet level departments like the FDA or the Environmental Protection Agency, and they simply issue regulations why have the force of law. They do this anonymously. They do it blinded. Congress has ceded so much of its own power to the administrative state, and this is what Donald Trump threatens. Donald Trump threatens the existence of the administrative state, the deep state, what have you — and that’s why he represents such a threat.
These people, the administrative state — for decades and decades — has succeeded in literally stealing power from the other branches of government. In many cases, those existing branches have let it happen. Congress has abrogated so much of its power (some to the executive branch, some to the administrative state) and when any edict or regulation or series of regulations comes out of the administrative state, as you know, it has the force of law, even though it has not gone through the law-making process.
It has not been debated by the elected representatives of the people, and therefore there is nothing democratic about it. It is purely autocratic. It is populated largely by career liberals, leftists, socialists, and it is there that they implement their agenda on this country, often anonymously. Nobody knows who everybody in the deep state is. They do it with no oversight. They do it with no sunlight. There is no open debate on legislation such as there is in Congress. It doesn’t have to go to a second body for confirmation and debate.
The president never sees these regulations, much less signs them. But they have the full-fledged force of law. It’s just ended up this way. It has been a conscious effort to centralize and focus power in the administrative state — or deep state, whatever you want to call it — in Washington, away from the people who are elected. This is why if you are of a mind that your government no longer represents you or that you don’t have a say in how your government operates or if you get the feeling that this giant disconnect…
You participate in every campaign. You go out; you vote for your elected representative or senator, you vote for the president, and it doesn’t seem to matter. Whatever you want, whatever you stand for, doesn’t exist. It just gets lost in the shuffle — and it’s exactly right. What you are sensing is not so much your member of Congress phoning it in or whatever. It’s just your member of Congress and every other member of Congress has given away their power over the years to the administrative state, and you have no sway over the administrative state.
You have nothing to say. You can’t lobby them; you can’t influence them; you can’t fax ’em; you can’t write ’em letters; you can’t call ’em on the phone and tell ’em you’re mad, ’cause you don’t know who they are. It is in the administrative state that the great disconnect between Washington — our capital, our government — and us, the people, is most pronounced. So your instinct is right. You sense this gigantic disconnect.
You sense that you have no more control or very little say-so over what happens in your neighborhood, in your community, in your state or even in your country. Yet you’re participating in the process. You may even donate money. You may even go out and raise money. You may even participate in phone banks, do all these things, everything they’ve told you to do to get involved. And then, despite everything you’ve done and you get the people you want elected, crap happens that you had no idea of, you had nothing to do about it, and there’s nothing you can do about it!
Hello, deep state or administrative state. That’s where all of this happens. Well, the Ivy League and major elite universities is where future members of this administrative state are trained. It is where they are educated. It is where they are prepared for their lives as functioning members of the government — largely in this invisible, massive, constantly expanding bureaucracy that answers to no one. And that’s why all… These white liberal, rich parents know full well that that is the connection. That is the elite. That’s what they want their kids to have access to.
As you will hear in this Ben Shapiro piece, there is nothing about it meritorious. There is no meritocracy involved. There’s no excellence. There’s no performance. All you have to do is get into one of these schools, and you’ve made it. You do not have to perform after you get there. You do not have to excel. You do not have to stand out. You can, but it doesn’t matter. Just getting in is the equivalent of being admitted into the club. Getting into one of these schools is it — and after that, if you want to go further on that path toward working and having power in government, you are set.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, back to what I think is the really teachable moment here today, and that is this admittance scandal. And the real teachable moment here is the “why” and the “how” of the constant populating or seeding of new blood into the administrative state. And again, for the purposes of definition, the administrative state, you can think of it as the giant bureaucracy that he encompasses all the cabinet departments, the EPA, FDA, Bureau of Labor Statistics, any of these things.
Any of these entities which issue regulations on what you can and can’t do with your own property and what you can and can’t do with your own voice, on what you can and can do with your own company, blah, blah, all these deep state or bureaucrat agencies, including the lobbying firms and law firms and media representatives, the administrative state, the bureaucracy, the deep state is the mechanism to strip away the Democratic process from the United States of America.
It has been the mechanism to transfer power from the elected representatives of the people in Congress, the House and Senate, to regulators, to the deep state, to the administrative state. It has happened over the course of many years. This is nothing new. This has been going on before I was born. But it continues to grow, it continues to gain power because Congress willingly cedes it, gives it away. It’s too controversial to actually make these tough decisions. Might not get reelected. So you farm it out, the deep state people take it. It’s who populates the deep state that makes it dangerous.
Now, the existence of a giant bureaucracy’s bad enough because of the many rules of bureaucrats and bureaucracies. They’re, by definition, never to solve anything because then there would be no need for them. State Department much the same way, and it’s part of the deep state. You never solve anything. And only you are qualified to work on things. But you never solve anything so that you’re always needed. Action is always needed. Steps need to constantly be taken. New regulations need to be written and mandated.
And the people doing this have to be trained somewhere, and they have to be fed into the system from somewhere. They have to be properly educated. They have to be properly indoctrinated into the role of the administrative state. They think they’re great patriots, in many cases. Others of them know exactly what they are. But it is the effective transfer of power from the elected representatives of the people to a bunch of people we’ve never met, we’ve never seen, we don’t know who they are. We can’t petition them. We can’t get rid of them. We can’t fax ’em. We can’t call ’em.
They don’t care what we think, by definition. That’s why they are there: to be insulated and unaffected by public opinion. That’s why it’s elite. Public opinion is, by definition, dumb, stupid, inefficient, and uninformed. So where do these people come from? Well, hello college admittance entry scandal.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay. So the major Ivy League universities… I don’t know how many times that I have proffered the opinion over the years that the Ivy League universities’, the elite universities’ primary purpose is the proving ground/training ground for future Washington bureaucrats. I did not know how actually correct that I was. I was speaking in a generic sense. But Ben Shapiro’s piece at the Daily Wire yesterday: “Famous Actresses Paid Bundles of Money to Bribe Their Kids’ Way into College. Here’s Why.”
One of the pull quotes is: “That’s why rich and famous people would spend oodles of money just to get their kids into top universities: not because their kids won’t have jobs or will go hungry” if they don’t get in, “but because they want their kids credentialed and admitted into the social club. … Social institutions in the United States have been fading over time. Churches used to provide us our chief means of social connection. Colleges now do. JD Vance writes in Hillbilly Elegy that admission to Yale Law School granted him social capital…”
Now, here’s the nut portion of Shapiro’s piece: “Here’s the problem. Neither of these priorities actually demands that universities teach anything. Credentialism occurs upon admission; so long as you aren’t thrown out of school. Social capital begins to accrue with your presence” at these schools “not with your performance. Hence colleges watering down curricula and grades in order to make it easier to credential, and to generate less friction.
“That’s what students and parents demand: not skills, not education, but credentialism and social capital” and admittance to the elites. Now, listen to this. Ben Shapiro: “After I was admitted to Harvard Law School, I attended orientation. Our 500-strong class was gathered in Memorial Hall, in historic Sanders Theater, where then-Dean Elena Kagan (now Supreme Court justice) spoke to us. She informed us…”
This is orientation to Harvard Law. Dean Kagan “informed us that the competition was over — we were in! No need to worry about the stuff we’d seen in The Paper Chase,” no need to worry about tough professors and big tests, “we were all going to leave with degrees and jobs. Not just that — as graduates of Harvard Law, we were destined to rule the universe. She informed us of how many alumni were in the Senate, how many in Congress, how many on the Supreme Court,” how many are in positions (visible and invisible) in Washington.
“The battle was over upon our acceptance to” Harvard Law. They didn’t have to prove anything. Now, I’m gonna be curious to see what Professor Dershowitz’s reaction to this is and also Laurence Tribe. You know, they have credentials themselves as some of the toughest law school professors ever, and Professor Dershowitz has said that the smartest student he’s ever had is Ted Cruz. But Shapiro says without any qualification here that the dean, Elena Kagan, said, “You’ve made it,” on the first day orientation. You’re in, you’re set, you’re guaranteed.
Don’t worry about Paper Chase stuff, meaning tough professors, big tests. Don’t worry about the GPA. You have made it. “All of this has significant social ramifications, of course. It means that our meritocracy doesn’t begin in college — it ends, for many, upon admission to college. And that, in turn, means that the failures of our lower education system loom larger. It also means that in the absence of functional non-collegiate social institutions, the social gap between college-goers and non-college-goers will grow.
“This also has significant political ramifications. It means that students admitted to colleges expect to be pampered, not challenged. Professor Harvey Mansfield of Harvard University was essentially forced by the administration not to give honest grades — he started giving two grades, one for merit, and then one for the administration, so as not to penalize people for taking his classes. Politically, this also means that students expect not to be challenged – they expect to be comfortable.
“Professors who challenge their politics, for example, may threaten their ‘college experience’ — which may, in turn, threaten their social capital. Professors who make students feel uncomfortable may be threatening the ease they were promised. Discomfort becomes a bug, not a feature, of higher education. Pampering becomes the rule. That’s why rich and famous people would spend oodles of money just to get their kids into top universities:
“Not because their kids won’t have jobs or will go hungry, but because they want their kids credentialed and admitted into the [elite of the elite] social club,” which is populated and fed by the elite universities. And this ends up being the group of people pampered, not having to perform, told how special and elite they are just ’cause they got in. These are the people who end up in these deep state bureaucratic positions that we never see; we can’t get rid of, who end up with unelected power over so much of this country.
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2019/03/13/how-corrupt-elite-colleges-and-universities-feed-the-administrative-state/
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