RUSH: Let’s go to Kenisha in Columbus, Georgia. Hi, Kenisha. It’s nice to have you on the program.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Mega dittos from Georgia. How you doing?
RUSH: Fine. Never better. Thank you.
CALLER: Well, I am an African-American female, and I’m prior military. My husband runs his own company and I’m an educated person as well as a stay-at-home mom, and I am so insulted by the language of these people that say they represent my race, the Congressional
Black Caucus. I became a Republican this last election and I will tell you, Rush, that from my observation all my friends, all this condescending talk is just pushing more and more young people — because I just turned 30 — in my generation away from the Democratic Party. It’s condescending to think that we’re too stupid to get an ID. I mean we have to have it for everything else, and it’s just a very insulting. I’ll tell you, it’s really turning off a lot of people of my age-group and turning us to say we need to be solution oriented and stop complaining and make some things happen, and that’s what pushed my husband and I and our family over to the other side.
RUSH: Congratulations. I know it takes courage for you to do this, and to even admit it.
CALLER: Oh, yeah, definitely, I mean we have Bush stickers on our car. We’ve taken a stand, but, you know, it takes people to take a stand and point out the truth without all the emotion and the screaming, and I’ll tell you that I wouldn’t vote for Hillary, even if I was a Democrat. She doesn’t represent me as a woman. I don’t admire her, and I just —
RUSH: You know, this is the thing. Kenisha, the thing I’ve always wondered about — I don’t care what the race of these people is. Anybody that’s in poverty, it’s been a 60-year quest here that’s obviously failed!
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: And the people who continue to make the whines and moans about it created the programs to “fix” it and have been in possession of the White House for a whole bunch of years during all of this and yet there’s never any progress. If you listen to them, we’re losing ground. We’ve spent $6 trillion on it, and I just… As a human being, I get worn out listening to whining and moaning and complaining. It doesn’t take very long, these people have been doing it for years, and I’m just wondering why it has not worn itself out with the intended recipients of this stuff, the recipients of the words.
CALLER: Yep.
RUSH: I know who Charles Rangel and Harry Belafonte are talking to. They’re talking not just to black poor, including them, but they’re talking to everybody that’s poor, and they want everybody in that group to believe that they are poor only because there are Republicans who are stealing money from them to give it to the rich. The poor have been made to believe that if it weren’t for all the theft from them, there wouldn’t be any rich people. It’s a disconnect. It’s a little total disconnect.
CALLER: Rush, it doesn’t make sense to me. How can you steal from poor people if they so-called don’t have anything.
RUSH: Well, individually they don’t, but, see, their view of America’s capitalist system is that it’s structurally unjust —
CALLER: (scoffs)
RUSH: — and that if the rich didn’t have all they have because they’re just lucky. They’re “the winners of life’s lottery.”
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: The rich have taken most of the money out of the economy, and it hasn’t left enough to be distributed so that each poor person has more than what they do. They don’t mean they’ve stolen it from each individual poor people, but they have a finite view of the American economy. It’s a pie that never gets any bigger.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: It’s only got certain number of pieces, and the disadvantaged don’t have their fair share of pieces, and the Democrats look at themselves as being in charge of slicing up the pie. It’s to them, a finite, zero-sum game. They think if somebody gets a job; somebody loses a job. They don’t understand increased economic output. They don’t understand growth cycles. They don’t understand the dynamics of tax cuts and other policies. It’s just stunning to me, and I know there have been generation after generation of inculcating this stuff into people’s minds, but at some point — like in your case — the lights have to go off.
CALLER: Well, you know, Rush, if that was the truth that the pie never was split up and that the rich are taking from the poor, then how do you explain all the people that struggle to come to our country for opportunities, that own small businesses, that oftentimes are in the black communities, and they make it? And then we get upset at them! I really believe it’s the heart of the individual that makes the decision to be somebody. It’s not the government’s responsibility, and the bottom line is, my grandmother who has recently voted for Bush and listens to your show every single day, is of the generation when rights were not there. She always talks about how when she was a child and when she was going to college, she was one of the first black nurses in the state of Connecticut, and grew up in this segregation times, and she said that back then we as a people carried ourselves with class and dignity, and the same people that are complaining now got their success — like Harry Belafonte and people like that — through this wonderful capitalistic society that we have. That’s what gives them the pulpit to speak even now, the freedoms we have in this country. So to me and to a lot of people in my generation, black and white, it’s just insulting, and they’re going to lose more and more elections the more they attack the foundations of our families and telling us that we’re too stupid as individuals, as God-given, this God-given right we have in this country to make our own decisions, and it’s turning a lot of people off. They can just keep on doing it and we’ll just keep winning. (laughs)
RUSH: Well, well stated, Kenisha, and thanks much for the call.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush!
RUSH: You are a brilliant young woman and very important to the future of this country.
CALLER: Thank you.
RUSH: So have a lot of kids and inculcate them with your beliefs.
CALLER: We are. Thank you for all you’re doing, Rush.
RUSH: Hubba hubba! All right.
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RUSH: Doug in Toledo, you’re next on Open Line Friday. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Mr. Limbaugh. I wanted to speak to you briefly about something you were saying earlier about there being… “All a person has to do is apply themselves,” and you oftentimes say that. I want to respectfully disagree with you. There are exceptions to every rule, and some people do actually make it out of certain situations. But unless you are exposed to or have access to the various tools and things that you need in order to accomplish things, then sometimes the best that you can do is average. I mean —
RUSH: All right, well, okay, hold it. Let’s discuss some of this. Who is depriving the poor of access to the tools that they need?
CALLER: Well, I agree with you in that. I’m not arguing that point. It’s just that I hear you, sir, and a lot of other people. I am an African-American who come from I would say average to below average means and situation, and I would say that I am performing or above average or at least average myself, and I’m okay with that. But oftentimes your people say, “Well, if you want to be rich, or if you want to have…” I disagree with that. You know, if my grandparents, which were, you know, sharecroppers, et cetera, et cetera, all they know how to do is work a field. Those various — that knowledge does not make me rich in today’s society.
RUSH: Hold it. Hold it. Hold, just a second.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: We don’t have sharecroppers anymore.
CALLER: My great-grandparents are from Mississippi. Both of them are deceased now.
RUSH: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Now, don’t have a knee-jerk reaction. We don’t have sharecroppers anymore. How can that be if there’s no opportunity?
CALLER: Mr. Limbaugh, I am simply saying that this is years and years of a situation compiling and becoming worse and worse.
RUSH: It’s not. See, Doug, you’re talking yourself into a situation here. The situation is not getting worse and worse. This country is more prosperous than anyone’s wildest dreams, and it’s getting more so each and every year, and more and more Americans who have sat around for 60 years and believed a bunch of promises from a bunch of politicians and told them, “We’re going to take care of this inequity. We’re going to make sure,” and they never do. All they do is go out and make a joke out of supposedly punishing the rich with high taxes, regulations, but none of that seems to help the poor. Now, I can tell you that there are countless millions of poor people who have escaped it, and many of them black. Many of them, what will you say, foreign. But people moving in and out of different levels of prosperity, income quintiles. The five top income levels are divided into five groups; they’re called quintiles, and people move in and out of those things all the time. This is the country where that is possible. This is a country with a rich history of that very thing happening, and it is not too easy to say, “If you want it, you can get it,” in this country it’s possible. We all have obstacles, every one of us. I’ve had them. I don’t complain about them because nobody would be sympathetic, and I don’t want any sympathy. But we’ve all had obstacles.
I’ve worked for rotten creeps. I’ve worked for people thought I didn’t amount to anything. Three of the people I worked with in radio told me I never had what it took, would never give me a shot at anything. I got fired seven times. I’ve been broke a couple of times. I’ve not been in poverty. I’ve not been poor. But I also know that the recipes that we have employed to get people out of poverty have not worked, because the same people keep complaining about it. Those who authored the policies keep complaining about it. One of the things that we are learning, as we study people that are in the depths of poverty, there are four things that you can do that will really help you avoid those straits. One is: Graduate from high school. Number two: Do not have a child before you get married, or two, or three. Number three is: Don’t get married until long after you’re out of high school, and have a job and so forth — and I forgot what the fourth is. But if you take a look at the demographics of people who are stuck in poverty — and poverty is a relative thing. The poverty in America generally consists of a couple television sets in your house, a car. Poverty in Africa, that’s poverty. Poverty in the rest of the world, that’s poverty. Poverty in America is relative compared to the prosperity that we have, and I’m not saying that poverty in America is a panacea. Please don’t take me out of context.
But there are clearly things that, if you study the demographics of poverty, you can see that there are some things in common — and if they could be taught to be avoided, if people had some reason, if they were inspired rather than told the deck is stacked against them, if they were motivated — and generally it’s parents and teachers that do this. But if you’re a parent when you’re 13 or 14, and you yourself have never been out of the situation you’re in, it’s going to be awhile before you’ve lived long enough to be able to maturity to raise your kids a different way than you were raised. There’s all kinds of factors here. But the one thing that’s not the primary root of the problem is our structure, our capitalist structure. It does not choose winners and losers. It does not predetermine winners and losers and keep them there forever. There are not winners of life’s lottery. There are winners of Powerball, but there are not winners of life’s lottery. The idea… Well, I take it back. Take it back. There are the trust funders who all they had to do, the Lucky Sperm Club. All they had to do was be born, and I can give you names from both political parties, starting with the Kennedys. “There are exceptions to everything,” as you say. But for most everybody who has made it, defined however they choose, there is a foundation and something that’s irreplaceable and it’s called hard work.
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