RUSH: John in Gainesville, Florida. I’m glad you called, sir. Great to have you on Open Line Friday.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Just wanted to tell you an hour’s worth of story in 30 seconds here. I could write a book on this, how I basically came from just being a default liberal like I like to say to people, to just being awakened to the truth.
RUSH: You were a default liberal.
CALLER: Yeah. It’s just something that you don’t set out and say you’re a liberal, just literally you have three out of four networks that are liberal.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: And you don’t know better than a child. I mean literally all they talk about is Rush Limbaugh’s racist, he’s sexist, he’s this, I mean, you get all this, you’re literally taught from day one from these networks, Republicans are bad.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: They’re all greedy old white men.
RUSH: But you don’t even think of yourself as liberal, you’re just what’s normal. Everybody else, these conservatives are a bunch of extremists.
CALLER: But you’re automatically lumped into the liberal category because they’re gonna grab anybody they want to.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: Just by default. I equate a liberal to being colorblind and one day you wake up and you’re not colorblind, you realize that you’re really conservative, you just didn’t know it. I was working in a union for a sheet metalworker for five years, went through the whole program, and this union that was supposed to be protecting me, and this is how it all came about, was supposed to be protecting me, they’re supposed to be there for your rights, literally a $20-an-hour package is what they call it, I’m supposed to be paid $20 an hour for each hour that I work for each job. I literally never made a check working 40 hours over $400. You can do the math on that.
RUSH: So you got paid $10 an hour instead of the 20.
CALLER: Exactly. The union was getting everything. They’re a small form of government. I got laid off three times.
RUSH: You mean you were paid the $20, but they deducted ten?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Ho. And then the government took their share out of the —
CALLER: Yeah, that’s gross now. They get their share first and then the government gets their share.
RUSH: Wow.
CALLER: So the synopsis of my whole story is, I literally was forced out of the union because of lack of work, and they’re all government jobs, mind you. Every job we ever worked on was schools, military.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Stuff I’m realizing now that I’m out in my own business. I literally, after being laid off the third time, told my wife, “I’m sick of it. I don’t want to be one of the statistics. I’ll just start my own business. I’ll even cut grass. That’s what I did in high school.” I literally had to get… I’m in Gainesville, Florida. I had to get six licenses to cut grass. We literally sold our TVs, our computers, everything.
She literally hocked off her ring so I could buy $3,000 worth of equipment, so I wouldn’t be push-mowing a 20-acre lot, and here we are. That’s how I started listening to talk radio, started listening to you. I didn’t search you out. You literally just happened to be the only station that would come in clear here on 97.3 The Sky in Gainesville. And that’s how I started listening.
I started listening, and I was literally listening with the aspect of, “I’m gonna catch how racist you are, how sexist you are, how this you are.” I started realizing (chuckling) that you weren’t saying anything that wasn’t true. I wasn’t even a fan of yours. I was… I like to call myself just an average American that’s not stupid, ’cause a lot of people write off liberals as stupid. I don’t consider myself to be stupid. I just consider myself to be colorblind, and all of a sudden I wake up one day and you see the whole picture because you’re not colorblind anymore.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: So that’s where we’re at. Now, we’re seven months into starting my own business and let me make one other point here real quickly. Poor people aren’t paying to get their grass cut. These greedy old white men that own their own business?
RUSH: (laughing)
CALLER: They’ve been the biggest encouragement for me.
RUSH: (laughing)
CALLER: They’re the ones. As a matter of fact, Rush, I’m telling you this. The really bad customers —
RUSH: (laughing) How long did it take you to figure that out, John, that poor people don’t pay to get their grass cut?
CALLER: One month.
RUSH: (laughing)
CALLER: The people who do manage to get somebody else to pay for their lawn for ’em who are on government assistance, they’re the hardest customers. You can’t please them. Liberals don’t even get along with each other. Half the liberals you talk to, they don’t agree with homosexuality or they don’t agree with abortion. They’re just all self-interest. And what you realize is conservatism is about America’s interests.
I’m just… I’m sorry. I’m in my thirties now and I’m like a kid in a candy store. I’m realizing I’ve been asleep at the wheel all my life and I’m probably saying stuff that’s redundant to you all, but it’s just amazing how many people are just asleep at the wheel. Literally, if they didn’t have the media on their side, these elections wouldn’t even be close.
RUSH: Let me tell you something: This is not redundant. We love hearing these kinds of stories of self-realization. We love hearing it. And your magic word there was “truth.” That’s what you stumbled across.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm!
RUSH: It’s opened a whole new world for you, it sounds like. You sound like —
CALLER: The government has been doing nothing. It’s been in spite of the government. The government is unfair.
RUSH: How is your landscaping business doing? How old is it? How long have you been doing it?
CALLER: Seven months, and I literally… I’m not joking. We literally had to scrape up $75. We sold everything. Like I said, we sold everything we could sell and literally scratched up enough money to buy an ad in the newspaper. Which you have to do, by the way, to get a license here. (chuckles) And for 75 bucks I just literally put an ad: “Average lawn $25” and that got the phone ringing.
People, all they see is you’re willing to work. You show up on time. You do what you say you’re gonna do. You’re not coming there with piercings all in your body. You just look like a trustworthy person, and, let me tell you: In spite of the government, in spite of everything I had to go through, literally within two months I was making more than I was ever was when I was working and busting my tail.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: You know as well as I do it’s a 24/7 business, everybody just thinks you get to go in there and make your own hours.
RUSH: Everybody who loves their job, it’s basically 24/7 ’cause it’s not really work. I mean, it is, it is — and you need a break from it now and then. But if it’s something you love or something you’re committed to, you don’t look at it as 24/7.
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: It’s just what it is. You know, I would love to be able to help you here. I’ve got, you know, the usual stash here of iPads and computers. I don’t know how that would help you, or if you’d just like to have one. I would love to give you a signature-engraved iPad.
CALLER: Absolutely. (garbled) an iPhone. (chuckles)
RUSH: You could sell that for a couple hundred bucks. (laughing)
CALLER: Well, actually one of the investments I made my third month in business was an iPhone to help my business out. We literally got rid of our Internet at home and chose to do this ’cause we literally sold everything. My wife literally had to get that back out of hock because that’s where it was.
RUSH: I’ll tell you what: People love hearing this because that’s what you do.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: You did what was necessary.
CALLER: The government wasn’t there. (laughs)
RUSH: You did what was necessary. So, look, John, hang on here a minute. Mr. Snerdley will get the address and we’ll send you an iPad. He’ll get the color you want and all that kind of stuff from you, but I’m really honored to have you in this audience. You’re a great way to close the end of the day here, and we wish you all the best. Stick with it, man. The country needs people like you.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I think John built his business, right? He built that. He built his landscaping business. He called it “cutting grass,” but it’s gonna be “landscaping” before he knows it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: My friends, that’s it. By the way, if you’re in Gainesville, Florida, look for a guy’s ad in the newspaper to cut your grass. His name is John. I neglected to get the name of his company but I’m pretty sure it will be discovered fairly soon.