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RUSH: Now, Rex Tillerson. Rex Tillerson is the CEO of ExxonMobil. A man by the name of Steven Coll, C-o-l-l, at The New Yorker has written a book about Exxon, and as such wrote a lot about Tillerson. In the process of writing his book he was denied repeated requests for interviews from Tillerson, but he nevertheless got a lot of Tillerson’s comments on the record because of shareholder meetings and other public appearances where Tillerson spoke, he would show up and record them.
This piece is in the December 11th issue of The New Yorker. Now, I don’t know what Mr. Coll intended, but my take on this, I think for any of you who have doubts about Tillerson, if you read this New Yorker piece, you’re gonna have a much more favorable impression of the man than if yours today is negative. I don’t know if Coll intends that or not. I don’t mean to be doing damage to his career here, but his piece makes me like Tillerson even more.
Here’s some details. And I’ve always liked Tillerson for a host of reasons. But, again, I’ve never stopped to think of Rex Tillerson as secretary of state. I’ve always look at Tillerson as what he is, the CEO of ExxonMobil. The book that Steve Coll wrote is called Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power. And he says here that Rex Tillerson’s life has been shaped to a profound extent by two institutions: ExxonMobil and the Boy Scouts of America.
Tillerson grew up in Texas. His father was an administrator for the scouts, was not paid very much. Rex Tillerson himself became an Eagle Scout. He was an engineering major at the University of Texas in Austin. He joined ExxonMobil in 1975 and he’s never worked anywhere else.
Now, ExxonMobil is part of the Rockefeller oil monopoly — Standard Oil — and it is said that of all the oil companies that resulted from the breakup of Standard Oil, that Exxon is culturally the closest to John D. Rockefeller and the way he ran Standard Oil, which means that ExxonMobil is organized on principles of capitalism. Mr. Coll describes it as ruthless capitalism. I think all of capitalism is ruthless. This is just what people don’t know. Competition, real competition for sales of anything, competition for ideas, competition is ruthless, period.
It’s not ruthless to people that doesn’t like it. It’s not ruthless to people don’t compete. But it can be brutal. And it’s not a bad thing. Competition is where innovation comes from. Competition is where leadership comes from. Don’t misunderstand. I’m not a person that sees perfection in things. Everything has its problems and faults. No individual is perfect. No group of people is perfect. But I am not one who believes that capitalism is flawed by virtue of its existence. The left is. >>> Continued at Rush Linbaugh
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