RUSH: Here’s Josh in Huber Heights, Ohio. Great to have you on the program. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you today?
RUSH: I’m well. Thank you.
CALLER: It’s really awesome to be on the phone with you. Okay, quick question. In this current age of large government, how do we change the hearts, and I guess the minds also, of the populace into treasuring freedom, into choosing liberate over benefits?
RUSH: Well, this is a question I have been dealing with for 25 years. Well, 25 years in August. And it’s extremely frustrating. The benefits are so great, the benefits are so plentiful that I’ve got a story in the stack, I should finds this. It’s a story about — and you’ve heard this before — a woman who is making out much better on all the forms of welfare she can collect than when she had a job, and she’s asking, “Why should I go get a job?” But the real question is, why is freedom such a hard sell? That’s the question. In this country, why has the idea of individual liberty and responsibility become such a hard sell? That’s something I never thought would happen here.
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RUSH: John in Chicago. Hello, sir. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush. You had made a statement earlier about how difficult it is to sell freedom in this country. But I do believe that what we are being sold is in fact a form of freedom: Financial freedom. The woman that you said makes more on welfare than she could get a job, that’s freedom to her, and to many people. Why endure having to go to work and struggle with that whole career deal when you can live more than a subsistent lifestyle by being on welfare?
RUSH: So —
CALLER: Public employees, government employees, they work 20, 25, maybe 30 years, 250, maybe, thousand in savings, but yet they get an annuity cash stream worth three to $5 million. Comments, please.
RUSH: So what you’re saying is that they do, the Democrats are selling freedom, freedom from responsibility.
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: Freedom from hassle. Freedom from the need to find a job.
CALLER: And the struggle.
RUSH: Freedom from the struggle.
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: Freedom from risk.
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: That’s what they’re selling.
CALLER: I believe so. And it’s very attractive, wouldn’t you say?
RUSH: I guess to some people it is. Well, obviously. Obviously, it is. And of course there’s no stigma attached to that anymore. There’s no stigma. In fact it’s almost a badge of honor, if you figured out a way to game the system. Makes you a big, proud person. Anyway, that’s an excellent point. While you were talking, I’m looking for that story, and maybe I didn’t print it out. Maybe I just saw it on the fly, but I know I did. Look, John, thanks for the call. I appreciate it.
It was a pretty detailed story. It was about a particular woman who had worked hard and done everything she could, and then learned that there was more waiting for her on the welfare rolls with a combined — like the Obama phone and food stamps, you know the drill. And she discovered there’s much more happiness, what have you, in not having to work, just exactly what he was talking about. It’s repugnant to me.