Courtesy of
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ericzorn/weblog/archives/2005/06/paul_harvey_ah.htmlAfter 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. It's doddering, it's rambling, it's uncouth but, I dunno, I detect that somewhere in there is a knock on *, whether it was intended or not.
Maybe this is Harvey's Brinkley Moment; remember when David Brinkley was caught on open mike expressing his utter disgust with Clinton (hey, Dave, whether you're up there or down yonder, I hope you're happy with the replacement).