O'Reilly Debates Socialism With Dr. Marc Lamont Hill

This is a rush transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," March 10, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

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BILL O'REILLY, HOST: Now for the top story tonight, let's bring in our favorite socialist, Dr. Marc Lamont "Che" Hill.

DR. MARC LAMONT HILL, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: I like the Che thing.

O'REILLY: We'll call you Che.

HILL: I like that.

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O'REILLY: OK, now I want to explain, because we got a lot of mail on this, a ton of mail on this, why other people on this planet deserve the fruits of my labor.

HILL: I mean, you have to put that statement in a certain context.

O'REILLY: That's why I have you here.

HILL: No, so the bulk of the fruit will go to you. If you work hard and you get educated or you find a business opportunity, you do whatever you need to do to be successful in this country, you will enjoy the fruits of your labor. However, that doesn't happen in a vacuum. Your success doesn't happen in a vacuum. There are other people around you, you know, for years, I've heard you talk about, you know, secular progressive values and moving away from Judeo Christian values. Well, the key Judeo Christian value to me is loving thy neighbor and helping the person who has fallen on the road. And so that's what this is about: providing opportunity for everyone else as you enjoy your success.

O'REILLY: But as a Christian, I try to do that. And I think we've proven that with BillOReilly.com charity and all of that. But is the government — does the government have a right to force me, in a free society, in a republic, to force me to support my neighbor who may be irresponsible. You see what I'm talking about?

HILL: Well, irresponsibility will always be punished, right? And there are people who are irresponsible in spite of all these policies. I agree with you to that extent. However, the reality here is that when you pay taxes, that money goes to create an infrastructure that increases the nation's possibility for wealth and prosperity. Adding to education, as Barack Obama's trying to do, expanding health care, all of these opportunities, extending unemployment benefits, all of these things will strengthen the nation and long-term will help the economy and help you.

O'REILLY: Now I don't mind paying taxes and render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's.

HILL: Indeed. Oh, wow.

O'REILLY: But income redistribution is something else other than taxes.

HILL: Oh.

O'REILLY: No, it is. You know it is. And Barack Obama admits that he's an income redistributionist. It's basically saying above and beyond your fair share, which I'm willing to pay, all right, and I'd say 40 percent to 50 percent of my paycheck is fair. And I think most people would agree with that, all right? Above and beyond that, Barack Obama and you and others say no, you have more of an obligation to then social engineer people who hadn't gotten educated, who don't work hard, who maybe were addicted for 30 years of their life, maybe they're clean now, OK?

HILL: No...

O'REILLY: No. You say to me there are other people around me, OK? Well, they didn't contribute to my success, the people around me.

HILL: They absolutely did.

O'REILLY: My parents might have...

HILL: No...

O'REILLY: …my friends might have, but not somebody I don't know who's fallen on hard times. They didn't.

HILL: But Bill, you're painting a picture that's simply not true. He's not talking about finding a small slice of heroin addicts in the United States and giving them lump sums of money. Ninety-seven percent of the American people will benefit from his tax restructuring.

O'REILLY: Restructuring. It's redistribution, not restructuring.

HILL: Listen to me. I don't dispute the idea that it's wealth — no, no, hear this out. I don't have a problem that it's redistribution. The problem here is that you won't acknowledge that for the last 20 years, we've had wealth redistribution. It's just gone from the middle class and the poor to the rich.

O'REILLY: No, it hasn't.

HILL: It absolutely has.

O'REILLY: Because the rich have always paid an inordinate amount of tax percentage-wise. The one percent pays more than 50 in income tax to the feds. That's way skewed, but it's all right because we have the money. And I love my country. And I want it to have a strong defense. And I want it to have a good infrastructure. What I don't want is when I die you coming into my house, taking the stuff I've already paid taxes on out of my house to give it to somebody I don't know who may not deserve it.

HILL: But that's not...

O'REILLY: That's what happens.

HILL: That's absolutely not what happens.

O'REILLY: That is what the death tax is.

HILL: Yeah, but you're — first of all, the death tax affects such a small slice of American people.

O'REILLY: It affects me.

HILL: Yes, Bill. But I have to think about 97, 98 percent of the American people.

O'REILLY: They can compete the same way I did.

HILL: But how can you compete without health care, without housing, without…

O'REILLY: I did.

HILL: You absolutely did not.

O'REILLY: I competed every step of the way after I went to Marist College. I didn't have anything given to me by the government at all.

HILL: But to even get to Marist College, you needed to have a high — you needed to survive birth, right? Many people have a low life expectancy at birth. Many people don't have an expectancy to survive birth.

O'REILLY: I needed this flu. Well, that's a good — I can't argue that point.

HILL: Right.

O'REILLY: I mean, we have hospitals here.

HILL: It seems so, but everybody — we live in a world where people die of preventable diseases every day because they don't have the things that you take as common sense. All I want is for people to have a fighting chance to have the same opportunity that you do.

O'REILLY: No. What you've lost sight of is your background and my background. We have similar backgrounds.

HILL: Absolutely.

O'REILLY: My parents didn't take a nickel from the government ever, OK? They made — my father broke his back to send me to private school, all right? He didn't take any money. I never got a scholarship, I never got a loan. I worked at Carvel and painted houses. I don't want my money, hard-earned money — when you say there are people around me who deserve it...

HILL: Ninety-seven percent.

O'REILLY: …they don't deserve my money.

HILL: Are you saying 97 percent of the American people don't deserve your money to go to housing and health care and education?

O'REILLY: Not to be given. They have to earn it.

HILL: They are earning it. They're American citizens who work every day. These aren't people who are sitting around with remote controls in their hands.

O'REILLY: No, you want — Obama and you want to give them things. That's why...

HILL: Well, we want to reward hard work. These are people who work every day.

O'REILLY: You know what rewards hard work?

HILL: These are people that go to work every day, Bill.

O'REILLY: Rewarding hard work is when you succeed. If you get a disease, if an anvil falls on your head from above, if any of that, I'm there to help you, I am there to help you. But if you don't go to school, if you drop out, if you have four kids by the time you're 21, I'm not going to give you my cash.

HILL: But if you live in a neighborhood where you don't have a school, where you don't have a teacher, where you don't have a book...

O'REILLY: Where, what neighborhood is that? Botswana? Where is that?

HILL: You don't have to go to Botswana. You can go to New York.

O'REILLY: They don't have schools? Every neighborhood has schools.

HILL: They have substandard schools. We have first-class jails and second-class schools.

O'REILLY: All right.

HILL: That's what we need to repair.

O'REILLY: The government is not going to be able to impose, all right, good schools in every community.

HILL: But we can impose opportunity. I don't want equality of outcome. I don't expect that. I just want equality of opportunity.

O'REILLY: That's a socialist tenet.

HILL: With your money and your house, we'll be able to do that.

O'REILLY: That's the big government tenet, and it didn't work in the Soviet Union. It didn't work in Cuba.

HILL: It worked in the 1990s under Clinton.

O'REILLY: No, he was not even close to what this is.

HILL: These tax policies are...

O'REILLY: Not close to what this is. All right, always invigorating.

HILL: Always fun, comrade. Can I call you comrade?

O'REILLY: Absolutely, Che. I wouldn't expect you to call me anything else.

HILL: If I'm Che, you're Fidel.

O'REILLY: Oh, yeah. Fidel just died upon hearing that. Boom, you win.

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