1115.org

For someone who is widely known as a radio legend, I’ve never been all that impressed by Paul Harvey’s daily routine on the local news/talk station. It’s like being forced to listen to the uncle who always laments about “the good old days” during Thanksgiving, but with more commercials for vitamin supplements. And, like that same uncle after a few drinks, Harvey can sometimes veer off into the rhetorical danger zone.

From last Thursday’s show (6/23/05):

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill said that the American people…he said, the American people, he said, and this is a direct quote, “We didn’t come this far because we are made of sugar candy.” That was his response to the attack on Pearl Harbor. That we didn’t come this far because we are made of sugar candy.

And that reminder was taken seriously. And we proceeded to develop and deliver the bomb, even though roughly 150,000 men, women and children perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With a single blow, World War II was over.

Following New York, Sept. 11, Winston Churchill was not here to remind us that we didn’t come this far because we’re made of sugar candy.

So, following the New York disaster, we mustered our humanity.

We gave old pals a pass, even though men and money from Saudi Arabia were largely responsible for the devastation of New York and Pennsylvania and our Pentagon.

We called Saudi Arabians our partners against terrorism and we sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq, and we kept our best weapons in our silos.

Even now we’re standing there dying, daring to do nothing decisive, because we’ve declared ourselves to be better than our terrorist enemies — more moral, more civilized.

Our image is at stake, we insist.

But we didn’t come this far because we’re made of sugar candy.

Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and into this continent by giving small pox infected blankets to native Americans.

Yes, that was biological warfare!

And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever. And we grew prosperous.

And, yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves.

And so it goes with most nation states, which, feeling guilty about their savage pasts, eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded, and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry and up and coming who are not made of sugar candy.

Translation: America is at its best when subjugating or slaughtering huge groups of people, so stop fucking around and drop a few nukes on Baghdad and Riyadh already. Even Limbaugh would probably hesitate before dropping that one on his listeners. Yet Paul Harvey, who is broadcast on more than 1,600 radio stations worldwide (on ABC and the Armed Forces Network, even) boldly goes in where others fear to tread.

But let’s give old Paul the benefit of the doubt, for at least a brief moment. You can hardly blame him for waxing nostalgic about giving disease-ridden blankets to Indians, or possessing slaves, or vaporizing an entire city with an atomic bomb; by this point, he’s probably old enough to remember each of these events first-hand. Freedom? Liberty? They’re nothing without a big gun and enough human fuel to feed the machine.

Actually, go right ahead and blame Paul Harvey all you like. While you’re at it, feel free to blame ABC, who in a perfect world will be dealing with a mountain of complaints (click here to add your own), even though no exposed breasts were involved.

Want to hear the rrrrrest of the story? Click here for the audio link of the broadcast. The above diatribe starts at around 12:15 in.