RUSH: Joshua in Birmingham, Alabama, great to have you. Open Line Friday. Hello.
CALLER: Mega dittos from a cracker in Alabama.
RUSH: Wow. Thank you.
CALLER: (chuckles) A couple of weeks ago there was talk going around that the American dream was dead, that it had died. I just wanted to call you and let you know it’s very much still alive in people like me, and that I was strongly influenced and inspired by a story you told, it must have been ten years ago. I think it was when you were driving back from the Richard Petty Driving Experience. You had gone out and done that, and you were sitting in a parking lot and there were shopping carts, and you observed person after person walk up to the shopping carts, try and grab the first one, and give up at like the first try. You observed this as long as you could and then you got out of your limo, walked over, dislodged the jammed shopping carts, only to go back and get back in your limo. When you were telling the story on the radio it was to express that people give up too easily, that we’ve been trained to have this mentality of we deserve things, and things should be handed to us. And you — somebody who was sitting in a limo in a position you didn’t have to go shopping, you didn’t have to go do this — but it frustrated you to see the apathy of people, and you went out of your way just to dislodge the cart to prove that it could be done without that much effort. I’m only 26, and I was inspired by that, and as a result, without very much education — with two business partners — we’ve taken just us three in a few years in the worst economy in a hundred years and we’ve built a company that has taken care of us and our families and all of our employees —
RUSH: What do you do? Make shopping carts?
CALLER: No. (chuckles) One of my business partners is an architect and we have a design-build firm. We design projects and then we go and build every part of it as well.
RUSH: No kidding.
CALLER: Down to the cabinets.
RUSH: That’s incredible. You’re far more educated in a classical sense, in a real sense than you would have people believe. You couldn’t do what you do if you weren’t.
CALLER: Sure.
RUSH: But I know what you mean. I’m trying to remember the details of the story. I remember I had gone to Vegas. It was in Vegas and I had gone to the Richard Petty Driving Experience. You could actually get in a NASCAR and drive it around the track.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: They had governors; you couldn’t go over 130 miles an hour but you put on the suit, you did the whole experience. So I’m driving back to the hotel. We were in a limo. That’s exactly right.
CALLER: Yup.
RUSH: We did stop at a grocery store, and I didn’t need anything there. I just want it understood: I didn’t need anything there, but somebody else did, and there were a whole bunch of shopping carts outside for customers to get, and everybody that went up there, a couple of them were jammed and they gave up trying to dislodge that shopping cart.
CALLER: (chuckles)
RUSH: It stunned me. I watched a bunch of people do this and give up. I said, ‘What’s so hard about this?’ I didn’t understand it. So I made a move to get out of the car. People said, ‘Don’t get out of the car! We’re here in a shopping plaza at a grocery store!’
CALLER: (chuckles)
RUSH: I said, ‘I’ve gotta go find out what’s so hard about this.’ So I went up there and I dislodged the cart. It was one stuck shopping cart that was enabling a whole row of them not to be used, and people were not exuding much effort whatsoever to dislodge this one shopping cart. I’m shocked that you remember that. That’s ten years ago, maybe longer, and you say you’re 26 now or 27?
CALLER: Yes, sir. I’m a Rush Baby in the truest sense. I remember when our whole family ran to the bookstore to get the first, hot-off-the-press copies of The Way Things Ought to Be. So from back in the day I’ve been listening my whole life, and I haven’t been ‘indoctrinated’ by you; I’ve been ‘encouraged’ by you. Because things haven’t been easy in this hard economy. Things have been tough. We have had to lay off people, but we’ve also hired them back. We’ve also grown our company, and what’s required of the three partners, me and my two business partners, is to sometimes work 120 hours a week. And it’s so that we can get our company in position where we can have employees again and we can begin to take care of the people who work for us and take a few for our families. I completely, violently reject the Obama philosophy. I don’t need to be on my parents’ health insurance until I’m 26 because I’ve been paying for my own insurance since I’m 21. I’m frustrated by my own generation. I remember telling this to a teacher of mine in high school, and he said, ‘People said the same thing about my generation. We went through the Vietnam War and we grew and life has a way of kicking you in the face, and you get back up and you recover, and the sooner you do that the better.’ I was encouraged. I just wanted to let you know and let your listeners know I was encouraged by that story, the story of somebody who didn’t need to go above and beyond to demonstrate to the people around them that you don’t have to give up the first time something is difficult.
RUSH: Wow, your memory is incredible. Shopping carts have been big on this show. I mean, shopping carts have played a major role in a lot of ways on this program. We used the shopping cart phenomenon to teach a whole bunch of lessons on this program.
CALLER: (chuckles)
RUSH: You’ve made my day here. I’m sitting here thinking back, I had totally forgotten this. I had totally forgotten that whole story. You call here and you remember that, and that story about me getting out of the car to dislodge a shopping cart, not understanding what was so hard that other people were giving up on this — it’s just a stuck cart! — that inspired you to start your own business. That’s just incredible.
CALLER: I need to bring this thing full circle. I wanted to share the story to counteract this talk that the American dream is dead.
RUSH: Sure.
CALLER: The American dream is not dead. It’s not dead, it’s just been misinterpreted. The American dream is not, ‘Come to America and we’ll give you everything your heart desires.’ The American dream is, ‘Come to America where you’re free, where there’s a free market. If you want to cut down trees, cut down trees. If you want to build houses, then build houses. But come here and work your tail off and eventually you will be in a better position, and, more importantly, you will have the opportunity to put your children into a better life.’
RUSH: Exactly right. The problem in America now is that you tell this story to the wrong people, and the reaction that you’ll get is, ‘Well, easy for you to say, that you don’t need to be on your parents’ health insurance ’til age 26. You just don’t know how hard it is for people! You don’t know, and the rich, you’re part of the problem because you’re taking care of yourself, and you don’t care about anybody else, and that’s why you don’t need to worry about being on your parents’ health plan. You don’t understand how tough it is for people!’ That’s the reaction you would get. You would not get… Well, in some places. Other places, like this audience you get a lot of respect, but in a lot of places you’d get a lot of resentment for that.
CALLER: Well, I would counteract with the fact that my dad told me when I was 17, ‘If you want go to college, I can’t help you a bit,’ and so I worked. I worked as a lobsterman for three years, and then I went and I tried to support myself, and it’s too expensive to pay for yourself, and I was smart enough to know I didn’t want to borrow $100,000 for an education that probably wouldn’t pay off for me. So I ended up dropping out to join my business partners in what we’ve done here in Birmingham, and the result has been I’m at this mountain of debt, but I was able to just work really, really hard, learn as I go, and oftentimes lose money to keep my clients happy. So, it’s not just this life of ease here in America. You have opportunity and freedom to pursue your dreams and eventually prevail.
RUSH: And that’s what people are fighting to preserve.
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: That’s exactly what this election is about is fighting to preserve the same opportunity, the freedom to pursue opportunity that you’ve just described, because people fear it’s being taken away. People fear it’s being eroded, and they’re right. One of the purposes of the Democrat Party and this regime is to dispirit people from doing what you’ve done. To tell them it’s not possible anymore, that it’s just the wrong way to go about things. You need to invest more in your government. Your government can be fair with people and redistribute wealth more fairly than you going out taking care of yourself.
CALLER: Well, my response to that is I figuratively give it the finger. (chuckles) I just keep working hard. Even if taxes go up and I pay 50%, I’m still gonna do what I do. If you tax me more, I’m still gonna do it because I love it.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: It is my dream. That’s my point. It’s the American dream and I’m living that. I’m living proof. I still am only 26. I may go through some harder times, but the beauty of this country is that in the ashes of defeat, if something does go wrong —
RUSH: Joshua?
CALLER: — I can pick up and try something else.
RUSH: Let me tell you something else. You’re only 26 and you may encounter some tough times ahead. I mean, you’re intelligent to think that, but you will never be homeless because you now know how to dislodge stuck shopping carts. You… (laughing)
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: (laughing) You’re ahead of game!
CALLER: Thank you, sir.
RUSH: I appreciate the call. You made all of our day here. You really did.
CALLER: Thank you, sir.
RUSH: You bet. Have a great weekend.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I am reminded that we put together a parody after my Las Vegas shopping cart story, and here it is…
(playing of spoof)
RUSH: Ten years ago, and I’m so focused on the next day that I forgot all about that story. And I’m getting droves of e-mails now from people who say they remember it and they still go to grocery stores and they encounter a stuck shopping cart and they don’t give up. It’s become a game now to unstick a stuck shopping cart. Interesting.