Rush Limbaugh Slams UK Olympics Opening Ceremony as 'More Socialist' Than China

The London Olympics opening ceremony has drawn controversy for its depiction of Britain's National Health Service as a Mary Poppins-esque child lover's dream, complete with dancing nurses and children who bounce excitedly in their hospital beds. This despite the fact that rationing is rampant in the system thanks to its socialized nature, to say nothing of the fact that the British government will be forced to reform it due to the unsustainable expense of keeping it up as is. No, forget all of that, and just enjoy the dancing nurses.

This celebration of an arguably dysfunctional system did not sit well with Rush Limbaugh, who took to his radio show to condemn the segment, as well as the entirety of the Olympic opening ceremony, for being poorly disguised socialist propaganda. From the transcript of Rush's show today:

CALLER:  Listen, Rush, I watched the opening ceremony of the Olympics, and I'm kind of curious to know, do you think that was more socialist than the Chinese opening ceremony?

RUSH:  It's an interesting comparison.  I remember the ChiCom opening ceremony. You know what stands out?  You had tens of thousands of people all doing the same thing, all dressed exactly alike, all walking the same way. Tens of thousands of people choreographed.  Not one individual among them.  Now, as a viewing spectacle, it was a sight to behold.  It was breathtaking.  And you had to, in a way, respect the choreography talents of the ChiCom bosses for being able to pull that off, but when you get past that, what you realized was that these are just automatons ordered to all behave identically, look identical, dress identical.  I mean, it was scary.  It was like watching zombies.  So now, then, we move to the UK, and we've got that opening ceremony where we had -- I think it's even worse, 'cause here we have an ostensible free people.  Theoretically, the UK is made up of free people.  And what did they choose to highlight about themselves but a bunch of collectivism?  You know that part of the opening ceremony where they highlighted the Industrial Revolution, you remember that?

CALLER:  Oh, absolutely, all of it, all of it, yeah.

RUSH:  Okay, I jabbed Kathryn in the ribs and I said, "That's how the libs want all of us to live.  That's where global warming --" Minus the smokestacks and the pollution, they want to get rid of modernity.  Anything modern, get rid of it.  That's when the planet was not being destroyed.  I know, Industrial Revolution.  But in terms of simple, non-technological, no electricity, that's what the extremists of the environmental movement want.  Of all the things of historical note in Great Britain, United Kingdom, the things they chose to highlight about themselves in that opening ceremony scared me more, because that's a free people basically honoring socialism and collectivism.  The ChiCom people had no choice.  They are under orders and under guns.  In the UK a free people decided to do it.  So I would have to say, in answer to your good question, despite the fact the ChiCom were drummers were better, I'll give you that, there's no question.

Listen to Rush's segment on the Olympics below, courtesy of the Daily Rushbo:

The thrust of Limbaugh's point will no doubt strike those opposed to socialism as pretty powerful. Unlike China, which is an openly authoritarian society, Britain does attempt to maintain its status as a free nation, and arguably gave birth to a lot of the ideas that inspired people to advocate for freedom (John Locke's theories, to name one). So the idea of celebrating precisely the most compulsory element of a culture that used to be a wellspring of pro-freedom literature could easily strike observers as perverse and sad, dancing nurses or no.

In either case, it's clear that sentimentality and whimsy are no substitute for truth on the EIB network.