I got the following in e-mail this morning. I include it here without
much comment as I don't usually care to argue politics on a Perl forum.
I just felt it provides a reasonable counter point to some of the
points I've seen expressed here and in chatter.
Widespread, but only partial news coverage was
given recently to a remarkable editorial broadcast
from Toronto by Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian
television commentator. What follows is the full
text of his trenchant remarks as printed in the
Congressional Record:
"This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the
Americans as most generous and possibly the least
appreciated people on all the earth.
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 these
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 in to help. This spring, 59 American
communities were flattened by tornadoes. Nobody
helped.
The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped
billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now
newspapers in those countries are writing about
the decadent, warmongering Americans. I'd like to
see just one of those countries that is gloating over
the erosion of the United States Dollar build its own
airplane. Does any other country in the world have
a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the
Lockheed Tristar, or the Douglas 10? If so, why
don't they fly them? Why do all the International
lines except Russia fly American planes?
Why does no other land on earth even consider
putting a man or woman 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 everybody to
look at. Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued
and hounded. They are here on our streets, and
most of them, unless they are breaking Canadian
laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa
at home to spend here.
When the railways of France, Germany and India
were breaking down through age, it was the
American 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 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 neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one
Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get
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 those."
http://www.snopes2.com/quotes/sinclair.htm adds this:
Origins: On June 5 1973, Canadian radio commentator
Gordon Sinclair decided he'd had enough of the stream of
criticism and negative press recently directed at the United
States of America by foreign journalists (primarily over
America's long military involvement in Vietnam, which had
ended with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords six months
earlier). When he arrived at radio station CFRB in Toronto
that morning, he spent twenty minutes dashing off a
two-page editorial defending the USA against its carping
critics which he then delivered in a defiant, indignant tone
during his "Let's Be Personal" spot at 11:45 AM that day.
The unusualness of any foreign correspondent -- even one
from a country with such close ties to the USA as Canada --
delivering such a caustic commentary about those who would
dare to criticize the USA is best demonstrated by the fact that
even thirty years later, many Americans doubt that this piece
(which has been circulating on the Internet in the
slightly-altered form quoted above as something "recently"
printed in a Toronto newspaper) is real. It is real, and it
received a great deal of attention in its day. After Sinclair's
editorial was rebroadcast by a few American radio stations, it
spread like wildfire all over the country. It was played again
and again (often superimposed over a piece of inspirational
music such as "Battle Hymn of the Republic" or "Bridge Over
Troubled Waters"), read into the Congress Record multiple
times, and finally released on a record (titled "The
Americans"), with all royalties donated to the American Red
Cross. (A Detroit radio broadcaster named Byron MacGregor
recorded and released an unauthorized version of the piece
that hit the record stores before Sinclair's official version; an
infringement suit was avoided when MacGregor agreed to
donate his profits to the Red Cross as well).
Sinclair passed away in 1984, but he will long be remembered
on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border -- both for his
contributions to journalism, and for his loudly proclaiming
what no one else at the time would stand up and say.