Northern Valley Beacon

Paul Harvey is a very old man, 86. His radio shows have been fixtures for years. Although he clearly espouses a conservative point of view, his commentary has for the most part been restrained and couched in democratic terms. Last week he went over the line. He celebrated killing native Americans with small pox-infested blankets, slavery, bombing Hiroshima, and genocide. Most alert people recognize that something terribly malicious lurks under the benign face put on Bush-era conservatism. In a radio broadcast on June 23, Harvey articulated precisely what progressives fear is driving the insane war on Iraq, the erosion of civil liberties, and the repressive discrimination being advanced on the country in the name of religion. In that broadcast, Harvey, indeed, told the rest of the story. Here is a transcript of his comments from Eric Zorn's column in the Chicago Tribune:

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.

Reconcile these words with those of the Declaration of Independence or the Pledge of Allegiance. Conservative bloggers will.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ericzorn/weblog/archives/2005/06/paul_harvey_ah.html