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Caller Credits This Show for Saving Her Family from the Entitlement Mentality


RUSH: Here's Mary, Cincinnati. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Oh, my God, Rush, is that you?

RUSH: It's me. It's me. It's really me.

CALLER: Oh, my God, this is like a dream come true. I thank you for taking my call, and I'm so thrilled to talk to you. I just want to tell you that I've been listening to you since I was 19. I grew up in southwest Detroit. I was a product of, like, welfare parents. My whole family was on assistance, their family. I grew up believing that I was entitled to everything, and then I just started listening to you -- and it was a fluke. I just heard you on the radio one day --

RUSH: Mary?


RUSH: I need --

CALLER: And you saved my life!

RUSH: Thank you. I need to ask you a question.

CALLER: All right!

RUSH: And please do not misunderstand a tone here that you may get wrong.

CALLER: All right!

RUSH: I'm not being critical or anything. I'm genuinely curious about something, because I haven't lived the life that you've lived, and based on something you said, I have a question.


RUSH: You said your family was on assistance, their family was on assistance, you grew up on assistance. Do you mean welfare assistance?


RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: That's exactly what I mean.

RUSH: But you then felt entitled. You said that everybody felt entitled to everything.

CALLER: Oh, exactly! Everything, like --

RUSH: Wait, wait, wait.


RUSH: But you certainly could not have had much, right? I mean, if you're living on welfare and assistance, you couldn't have had much. So what was the value in being entitled to everything when "everything" wasn't much at all?

CALLER: That's very true. No. We did not have much. We just felt that it should be given to us, all of the food and, like, our utilities paid and all that sort of thing. And my sister, she was a year older than me and she got pregnant when she was 15, had two kids. This is the house I lived in. She kept getting checks from the government, you know, and I remember this all clearly. The whole time I wanted this big radio, and my sister is like, "Well, go have a baby, and you can buy one." But I never did, okay? But, anyway, so I started listening to you, because I was helping garden for this man to earn extra money. Because I never had any clothes or good shoes or anything and he started listening. He would always listening to you. So I would hear you, and I'm telling you: You saved my life! Because I went to college, I put myself through school, I worked two jobs to do it. I became a registered nurse. I met a man -- a really good man -- he's an engineer. --

RUSH: Wow!

CALLER: We have two beautiful children who go to Catholic schools and I'm a stay-at-home mom and I'll tell you why: If I would have never heard you I would have never done it. I would have, like, just --

RUSH: Mary, let me --

CALLER: -- gotten pregnant and sat around.

RUSH: Let me ask you another question. Let me ask you another question, okay? You're sitting there when you were a child before any of these changes have happened to you, and you're living on "assistance," as you called it. And everybody felt entitled. But you saw in other areas of Detroit, did you not, that had a lot more than you did, did you not?

CALLER: Oh, absolutely.

RUSH: Okay, did you want that for yourself, or were you happy? Did your family want that for themselves, or were they happy to be whatever they were, as long as it was given to them? Because I'm wondering about the ambition. When you said that they felt "entitled," what I'm getting not hung up on here is but... Living on welfare is a life of subsistence. There's no wealth. There's no great opportunity, no shining city on a hill. It's a crapshoot every day and yet you look outside where you live, and there's all kinds of people with a lot more. Did your family ever aspire to having more than they had?

CALLER: I don't know if they did or not. All I know is they really begrudged people that had more than they did.

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: It was always because they were richer or, you know, they had it because their family had a lot of money and it was given to them.

RUSH: That's exactly it. Okay, you're right, you're right, you're right.

CALLER: They were very resentful towards anyone that worked hard and had a job and worked hard for what they wanted. And even when I was in college I felt my relationship with my family completely change. Once I started working, I felt like they were kind of resentful towards me, too, and I --

RUSH: Did you ever know why? Why did they resent people who worked?

CALLER: I don't know. They felt like they couldn't do it. They felt like, "No, I'm..." I would always tell my sister, I would always say, "You need to go back to school. You would probably be eligible for so many different things, you know, since you've got the two children and everything." And she just says, "No, no, I don't have time for it. You know, I'm not smart enough or whatever. I like my life here." It's very scary.

RUSH: Okay, so what happened is you got lucky.

CALLER: I did.

RUSH: You found something, in your case this program, that lit your ambitions fire.

CALLER: It did. And you showed me that there was an option.

RUSH: And the rest of your family never found that?

CALLER: Right. Well, actually my two nieces did -- and I'm so proud of these girls. They're 22, they're twins, they're my sister's daughters. They actually are in graduate school right now because I got them listening to you when they were 15. They would come to my house every summer to help me with my kids and I made sure I showed them you. And these girls, my nieces, they just finished college. My one niece is in pharmacy school right now, and my other niece is in graduate school.

RUSH: Well, Mary, you're making our day here. You are warming our hearts. I love hearing stories like this, because this is the America I know, and these are the possibilities that I know. I'm really honored to have played some role here -- at least in your assessment -- in your good fortune. See, folks, this is what I was talking about yesterday. People like her family is who Obama is campaigning to. People like her family is who he wants to believe that these Republicans in the court are gonna take away their health care. That's who he's campaigning to.

Thank you, Mary.



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