Rogers wisdom

What this country needs is a Will Rogers, whose comments, wit and wisdom help keep the chaotic events of today’s complex world a little more in perspective and to dispel some of the rancor and anger we’re bombarded with every day. While the noted cowboy humorist died in a plane crash in Alaska in 1935, perhaps a bit of his legacy can be applied to life and politics today. Some of his comments have a timeless element to them. Here are a few, complete with deliberate misspellings and grammatical flaws:

 Our problem is not what is the dollar worth in London, Rome or Paris, or what even it is worth at home. It’s how to get hold of it, whatever it’s worth.

 Last year, we said “Things can’t go on like this,” and they didn’t; they got worse.

 Common sense is not an issue in politics, it’s an affliction. Neither is honesty an issue in politics, it’s a miracle.

 Wouldn’t it be great if other countries started electing by the ballot instead of by the bullet and us electing by the ballot instead of by the bullion?

 Political elections are a good deal like marriages; there’s no accounting for anyone’s taste.

 You take diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.

 One way to solve the traffic problem would be to keep all the cars that are not paid for off the streets. Children could use the streets for playgrounds then.

 I have a scheme for stopping war. It’s this: No nation is allowed to enter a war ‘till they have paid for the last one.

 Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

 I represent a new class of people in this country, the newly poor.

 As we look back on it now, somebody ought to have taken each one of us and soaked our fat heads. We bought everything under the sun, but where was our payments going to be if we lost our jobs? Why, that had never entered our heads. Why should we lose our jobs? Wasn’t all our big men telling us things was even going to get better? Was our prominent men warning us? If we had had a “prominent” man he would have, but we just didn’t have any.

 You know, there was a time when we couldn’t spell a “billion” dollars, much less realize it, count it or anything. But now, as a nation, we learn pretty fast, ‘till it won’t be long now, and we’ll be working on the word “trillion. . .” You’ll read in the papers, “Congress has just been asked to appropriate two trillion dollars to relieve the descendants of a race of people called “Wall Streeters.” The paper will go on to say, “This is a worthy cause, and no doubt this small appropriation will be made, as they are the wards of the government.”