Want the Bickering Stopped? Listen to Paul Harvey

With the way Congress is bickering about the debt ceiling, it's funny the memories it's allowed to bring up.  For some odd reason, this particular one has stuck me for more than thirty-five years.  It was a mere moment, but I'm glad it did.


Paul Harvey


I was going through the paper, and for some reason, decided to read Paul Harvey's column.  I don't know why, as at the age I was, I would read the funnies, and if there was no baseball news, I skipped the sports.  Plus, I always read the late Jim Lange's editorial cartoon.  But this particular day, that column stuck out, and I've never forgotten it. 

He wrote of how everyone wanted a problem solved, and when a solution came up, someone in a part of the nation would cry out, "Not that!  It hurts me!"  So they'd come up with yet another solution, and another group would shout out, "You can't do that!  It hurts me!"  So they would go back to the drawing board, return with Plan C, and lo and behold another group would rush up screaming at the top of their lungs:  "What are you doing?  Can't you see the damage that will do to us?"

Harvey went on to point out that in order for the then-current problem to be stopped, people needed to quit acting as individuals, and act as Americans.  They needed to dump the 'me first' attitude that had taken over.  That, he said, was the only way this was going to happen.

Sadly, while people respected Paul Harvey, continuing to listen to him on the radio and read his column, they evidently ignored what he had to say that particular day.  We are more of a 'me first' generation than we were thirty-five years ago.  I remember Dr. John George saying many times to my classes, "People are like Templeton the rat from Charlotte's Web in that we're always asking, 'What's in it for me?'" 

In looking over today's times, we need to remember to drop the 'me first' and put an 'America first' attitude.  We hear so many differing viewpoints from Washington, it's hard to tell what is going on there.  People will say, "Oh, I believe so and so, as he's a member of my party."  In the long run, that's worth about as much as a wooden nickel. 

We need to drop our selfish attitude, and remember the foundations this nation started on.  If not, we're going to continue this downward spiral.  Nations that have forgotten their past have no future.

For Paul Harvey - Good day.