Pauls Harveys voice not forgotten here
POLSON – Some 500 people crowded into Polson High School gym in July 1966 to hear Paul Harvey, the popular ABC-network news analyst/commentator. He appeared as a guest lecturer for the fledgling Mission Mountain College’s initial summer session. Perhaps some of his remarks of 1966 might well have been made in 2009.
Here are excerpts of Harvey’s lecture as reported by Gordon Harding in the Flathead Courier:
Americans expect prompt extermination of all the world’s problems. However, if there were perpetual sunshine, there would be no rain and without rain there would be no life. Therefore, storms are a part of the plan of life.
But to live through these difficult times while trying to cure some of the problems is going to be tougher for Americans than for most people because we have had it so good.
Practices of good housekeeping are like practices of good world politics: A good housewife will not allow her dwelling to be overrun with dirt and filth; rather, she will faithfully keep at the cleaning task – as we must do. However, a good housewife will collapse from over-exertion; just the same as our nation might collapse if we don’t learn to recognize our own limitations. To over-extend ourselves can be fatal. We have no choice but to keep on with the dusting, the sweeping, the mopping if we are to realize our goal of having a better world.
To what can we attribute all the violence we are experiencing nowadays? Some experts say that too strict law enforcement is the cause; others claim we don’t have enough law enforcement. Well, while all the experts are in disagreement, let an amateur, Paul Harvey, try to explain it. We all feel like rioting at sometime; we all feel like walking off the job; we all feel like laying down the broom; and I feel this fact is overlooked by today’s experts. Not a day goes by that each one of us doesn’t feel like rebelling.
Success is determined by not how much you can dish out, but, rather, by how much crow you can eat, how many times you can turn the other cheek and keep turning that cheek, by how many times you can be humble and learn from you mistakes . . .
I grew up in the age when the song “The Big Rock Candy Mountain” was popular. Maybe some of you can’t remember singing about that pie-in-the-sky, when we could all go and no one would have to worry about a thing, where a bum could play all day, without a dime – well, folks, I heard that song again in the President’s State of the Union message … The music was missing, but the promises were the same. He promised something for everybody, without an increase in taxes to anyone. How?
The government can’t pay for anything without money, and they can’t get any money without taxing us, and we have no way of producing this money unless we work for it. And unless something else comes up, these are the hard facts of life: We have to work for that money and it’s really tough sometimes when so many of us won’t (work) – 7,800,000, nearly eight million, Americans tonight are on public welfare … Why?
I’ll tell you why … because the more you work, the more you earn and the more you earn the more you are taxed. And these people, by not working, by living off of taxes that you and I pay, are taking more money home, because relief money is tax-free, than they could by holding down an honest job.
Our intentions are good and we don’t want to see anyone starve on the streets or see children go without shoes or education, but we can kill by over-kindness. These people cannot be held responsible for their condition. We, you and I the taxpayer, the working American is responsible for the dependence of these people.
We once owned a small poodle who loved candy. Of course, we knew candy was harmful for dogs, but the little guy loved it – he begged for it. And we gave him his candy. The dog finally developed diabetes and died. Sure, we made him momentarily happy, but we made him permanently dependent. And so it goes for the American voter. He cries for free enterprise and votes for Santa Claus. If we can use history as a criterion, then it won’t be the communist countries that discredit Uncle Sam – it will be Uncle Sam.
Juvenile delinquency wasn’t much in my day. Of course, some of the boys tried smoking out behind the barn, or if any of them got caught shooting a hole in the sugar sack hanging on the line, there would be a trip to the woodshed in store for them. But stealing and malicious damage was almost unheard of in the old country. Why, back in the old country, we learned a trade – not the tricks of a trade. And religion and education was all mixed together, you couldn’t tell when one began and the other left off.
Patriotism was taught everywhere; soldiers were somebody and civil servants were servants, not masters, and freeloading was a disgrace in the old country. Now you may ask, “If you like the old country so much, Paul Harvey, why don’t you go back?” Because it isn’t there anymore. I’m a displaced person – a DP, but I didn’t leave the old country, it left me. You see, folks, I’m a native born American
The good old days are gone, but what are we going to do about these good new days? Are we going to do what some of the Hollywood people are trying to do, stop the world so we can get off? Or are we going to take what we have, which is more than we have ever had before, and work with it?
What makes a nation strong? Is it the commercial aspect? No, it is not, if it were Britain would never have taken a second seat. Is it political ideals? No, it isn’t. If it were, Rome would have never fallen. Is it military might? No, it is not. If it were, Germany would have won the war. Religion is not enough by itself and if treachery could make a nation strong, Japan would have never fallen.
Someone once gave the answer. He said America is great because Americans are good. But if Americans cease to be good, then America will cease to be great. Look closely at the headlines in tomorrow’s paper; is there an underlying moral issue the headlines are screaming? Has Christianity run its course? We had a two percent increase in church attendance this year but crime increased seven percent and pornography is a multi-million dollar business. For every dollar we spent for churches, we spent $1,200 for crime. Our clergy are not being persecuted today, they are being ignored.
As with other things education must also be held responsible for the intellect. Churches teach us how to handle our emotions. We educate our children to be tolerant – tolerant to the point that everything stands for nothing. I don’t believe the Almighty God will save this promised land; he has never saved any other promised land – when the people themselves don’t want to save it…
The founders of the country came over here not to do what they wanted, but to do what they ought.
Freedom, complete freedom, is a train without a track, without guidance, without a future. It is free to go where it pleases, but it doesn’t know where it is going. We have lost conflicts and friends all over the globe not because of what we held in our hands, but because of what we lacked in our hearts.
Young people need a perspective of the entire picture. The questions some of the young people ask today, even the ones I can’t answer, thrill me. By the time they graduate from high school, they’ll know that two plus two equals four — don’t laugh. Because we didn’t know, they fooled us into thinking we could all stand around in a circle with our hands in the next guy’s pocket and thereby all get rich.
I’m happy to see that crime and sex killings are still played on the front pages of newspapers because that means these are still exceptions and they are not commonplace
If America is worth fighting and dying for, then it is worth working for. I don’t like to have to give a graduate a diploma in one hand and a gun in the other either. But, as I’ve said, it has never been easy.
Although the tools have changed since our forefathers, we no longer have the axe, the hoe, the plow to tame the wilderness, we must never lay down the broom and mop if we ever expect to realize the same goals – a better world to live in.