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Posted on 09/17/2001 1:02:48 PM PDT by AmishDude
"LET'S BE PERSONAL" Broadcast June 5, 1973 CFRB, Toronto, Ontario
Topic: "The Americans"
The United States dollar took another pounding on German, French and British exchanges this morning, hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany. It has declined there by 41% since 1971 and this Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least-appreciated people in all the earth.
As long as sixty years ago, when I first started to read newspapers, I read of floods on the Yellow River and the Yangtse. Who rushed in with men and money to help? The Americans did.
They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges and the Niger. Today, the rich bottom land of the Misssissippi is under water and no foreign land has sent a dollar to help. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy, were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of those countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.
When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it.
When distant cities are hit by earthquakes, it is the United States that hurries into help... Managua Nicaragua is one of the most recent examples. So far this spring, 59 American communities have been flattened by tornadoes. Nobody has helped.
The Marshall Plan .. the Truman Policy .. all pumped billions upon billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now, newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent war-mongering Americans.
I'd like to see one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplanes.
Come on... let's hear it! Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tristar or the Douglas 107? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all international lines except Russia fly American planes? Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or women on the moon?
You talk about Japanese technocracy and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy and you find men on the moon, not once, but several times ... and safely home again. You talk about scandals and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everyone to look at. Even the draft dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, most of them ... unless they are breaking Canadian laws .. are getting American dollars from Ma and Pa at home to spend here.
When the Americans get out of this bind ... as they will... who could blame them if they said 'the hell with the rest of the world'. Let someone else buy the Israel bonds, Let someone else build or repair foreign dams or design foreign buildings that won't shake apart in earthquakes.
When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke. I can name to you 5,000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble.
Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake.
Our neighbours have faced it alone and I am one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles.
I hope Canada is not one of these. But there are many smug, self-righteous Canadians. And finally, the American Red Cross was told at its 48th Annual meeting in New Orleans this morning that it was broke.
This year's disasters .. with the year less than half-over… has taken it all and nobody...but nobody... has helped.
ORIGINAL SCRIPT AND AUDIO
COURTESY STANDARD BROADCASTING CORPORATION LTD.
(c) 1973 BY GORDON SINCLAIR
Listen to the original audio here. This is also at the radio station's website but that website freezes my browser.
"Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble?"
Sure ...
1. The French and the Hessians helped us in the revolutionary war.
2. When Rommel decimated the Americans at Kesselrine Pass in North Africa, Montgomery had to send in his own troops to save American bacon. Afterwards, of course, Patton was put in charge and the U.S. improved dramatically.
3. Britain, Canada, and Australia have fought (and died) with us in just every recent war - WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, etc, as they no doubt will in the current war.
Are we Americans so starved for approval that we have to dredge up this thirty year old article to feel good about ourselves?
The hallmark of greatness is private pride and public modesty.
Actually, the Hessians were our enemy.
And the French only helped us because we had a common enemy, not out of goodwill.
The salient point is still the constant posting of this article. A nice gesture from a Canadian friend in 1973.
Yes, we are a great nation, but the continual posting of the article 28 years later is the kind of shallow puffery that makes us look small-minded and insecure.
No doubt. But let us recall some of these. WWI was not much of our business. It was ending as the US became involved. Even though there were American interests and moral imperatives in WWII, the US had its hands full with the war in the Pacific. It was extraordinary on our part to even be involved in the European/North African Theatre.
Korea and Vietnam were both outside of the sphere of vital US interests and were entered into because of the vacuum left by the retreat of European colonial powers.
The Gulf War did have a vital US interest, but "our bacon" was hardly saved.
You make a valid point vis-a-vis the tone of the post, but the "We were asking for it" posts have gotten a bit thick around here.
Oh, and I've never heard it before. I don't have the benefit of your . . . experience.
Absolutely no need to. My point was this: an author search would have turned up empty, even if Mr. Sinclair's piece had been posted a hundred times. It's not your fault.
They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges and the Niger. Today, the rich bottom land of the Misssissippi is under water and no foreign land has sent a dollar to help.
We have two cats that are largely wild. They sleep outside by preference, and although you can approach them, they're not particularly tame. When we voluntarily leave food out for them, they eat it but have no interest in us at all. They either act indifferent, or downright hostile, hissing at us if we approach.
BUT, when we don't put the food out for several days, they eventually come scratching on the door, purring when you get near them, coming inside to rub on our legs.
I can't believe that this basic psychology is absent from the foreign affairs master-minds that dole out international aid at taxpayer expense. But then, I never did buy into the "best and the brightest" progaganda. I think they've repeatedly proven just how base, how clumsy they actually are, all their degress and collective frat associations put together notwithstanding.
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