I Could EASILY Have Been Part of the 47%

I'm a second-generation single (divorced) mom. My mother and father divorced when I was in middle school. I divorced the father of my children when the girls were 4 and 2. If anyone was ever set up to wallow in victimhood and depend on entitlements, it should've been me.

But even though I was raised by uber-left, card-carrying liberals (you have no idea), I was raised that you are responsible for your own future, you can do anything as long as you're willing to work hard enough, and no, it's not the village's responsibility to raise a child.

When my parents divorced, my mom worked her butt off to support us. She had been a stay-at-home mom, had not yet finished a college degree and made ends meet as a clerk-then-manager of a convenience store, then a waitress-then-bartender at a bar in very touristy St. Augustine Beach. I spent a lot of nights home alone. I helped my mom roll tips. I read a lot of books. And yet, the lesson I learned was self-sufficiency.

I became an over-achiever. As a November baby, I started first grade at five years old. I was one of the younger kids in my class, so when I skipped my senior year, that meant I started college at 16. Of course, I quit at 17 when I met my first husband...and although my mom was convinced I would never finish, 5 attempts and 22 years later, I finally did. (Thanks for the challenge, Mom!)

When I divorced, I had started but not yet completed my college degree. I'd been in my full-time job that paid $6.25/hour for a year. I had the burden of a car payment, because the area I lived in didn't have mass transit.

I left my husband with the house and took only the bare minimum of furniture I needed for the children. We didn't even have a sofa until my grandmother gave me the old one she had in her basement. My mom had by that time moved to Arizona. I can't remember exactly where Daddy (oh, yes, I'm a Southern girl, so I can call my father Daddy, regardless of how old I am!) was at that time (Kentucky, Maryland...maybe Georgia?) but basically, I was on my own without much support.

It became clear to me almost immediately that most of the folks in my neighborhood of duplex apartments near "downtown" McDonough, GA had their housing subsidized. I didn't.

I probably could have qualified for WIC or food stamps, but it never occurred to me to apply.

I'm pretty sure I was so poor I could've gone back to school on a Pell Grant, but I didn't have the time or energy.

My child support barely covered childcare, but it was a priority for me to send my girls to a private kindergarten at the Stockbridge First Baptist Church where they learned to read from Beka Books at ages 2 and 3.

Yes, I did have a car payment, but my car of choice was a Subaru Justy (before the AWD), a stripped-down sub-compact that got great gas mileage, because my metro-Atlanta commute was 25ish miles each way. Sure, I probably could've qualified to buy a more expensive car, but my parents taught me better than that.

5 years after I got divorced, I bought a house. I was not part of the sub-prime lending debacle. Again, my housing was not subsidized. I only purchased a little starter house that I could afford, because my parents raised me to live within means. Keeping up with the Joneses was not in my repertoire. As Paul Ryan has said, he and Romney want "to bring growth and opportunity to society instead of this class warfare, instead of speaking to people like they're stuck in some class or station in life."

My station in life was something I felt like I could always improve upon...and I did.

I returned to school on my own dime several times, finally finishing at a private school, emerging with $38K in student loans and a grand sense of accomplishment.

I stuck with that $6.25/hour job and made good decisions...and advanced. I have a pension, a 401K, good healthcare and a good salary. My children both graduated from high school with honors. My youngest bought a house at 23 and is currently pursuing her masters degree.

Folks, it's not about a class or a color. It's not about a nuclear family, although that definitely helps. It's about the values my parents imparted to me and the education-oriented achievement culture in which I was raised. The government is not our panacea. I am proud to be Julie and not Obama's Julia...and tickled to be in the top 10% based on hard work and good decisions, because my parents always told me that it was possible instead of convincing me that I was a victim.