Gordon Sinclair

An email about Gordon Sinclair's radio broadcast from 1973 has been circulating since the attacks on the United States. I approach these emails with a certain trepidation given the tendency of the Internet to spread hoaxes. There are numerous confirmations of Sinclair's broadcast on the net, and today there's been an explosion in the number of weblogging references to Gordon Sinclair. The emailed version differs from the transcripts of that broadcast, but they're both good reading to keep our spirits high.

Emailed to me by Greggman:

America: The Good Neighbor.

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 broadcast.

"This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the 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 France 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 earthquakes hit distant cities, 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 Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? 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 Americans 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 5000 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."

Stand proud, America!

I got this email too...

I don't think the fact that other countries don't offer help is because they don't care, but it's merely a reflection that US simply has more resources to deal with any sort of situations than any other country in the world. When the strognest and most powerful face adversities, they're unfortunately presumed to be able to deal with it themselves.

I agree...

...that taken as an argument, it's not a very strong one. In fact, as far as the writing goes, it lacks focus -- one reason why I was initially suspicious of its authenticity.

But what pervades the piece, the sentiment, the theme of appreciation, is much needed during this time when Americans are questioning their role in the world.

What is patriotism nowadays?

I was pretty disturbed (as most people were) seeing these little Palestinian kids cheering with their flags over the WTC attack. It seems a little far fetched that kids at that age have enough anger in them to allow them to celebrate in fulfillment over what happened in NY. But they grew up in constant state of war and fear; Nobody in their right mind wants to exist in that kind of environment, and anybody who grows up there are undoubtedly angry and will look for someone to blame.

When the coin flips, when US planes starts to go in and bomb the crap out of their countries, I suspect that American children will cheer just as loudly, not fully understanding that, the people who will be killed over there, are mother father children as well.

It is easy to arise to patrotism when shit hits the fan, when our McDonalds and our Nike stores are destroyed beyond recongnition, or when the reality of war casualties appears before our eyes. But as we champion the total eradication of whoever responsible for the attack, shouldn't we be consciounce of why something like this happened, why these people felt enough tip of the scale to want to equalize things with terror?

When I was educated in my home country, I was taught to despise communism, I grew up reading war stories about all the wrongs others did to my fellow countrymen and invariably I was persuaded to hate. How does that help to make the world a better place? If those kids in Palestine have their Toys R Us, have their Disneyland, and were taught to respect their fellow human beings, then this would be a much different world.

Maybe patroticism ought to be above mere show of spirit during the olympics or times of injustice. Maybe it's time to believe in what one's country stands for and live it, not just preach it. People will not whine about higher ticket prices to pay for safety, but they will bitch about a 1% tax increase if it meant those money are going to the welfare of middle easterners to help with the peace pocess. Sure their problems are not our fault, but as America is infiltrating the rest of the world with its way of life, invariably, true to trade, other less fortunate countries will export their sense of delution as well.

Kids and Support and Terror

If you are bringing up a young child you realize that anything that you do, they do. If you jump up with excitement and cheer that is exactly what they will do. It is also possible that for these children that this is a pattern. If it is common to see wreckage and destruction happen and always view it as our group vs. their group, then this was just another day for them. The fact that their parents could not rationalize the size of human death that they were looking at as many times worse than any single event that they have ever witnessed and also could not conclude that it will result in a much worse life ahead was probably only a temporary mistake. I'm sure that these facts are sinking in now.

I'm not sure that Gordon Sinclair's statments are very useful at this time. Many countries around the world are very aware of how important their support for the US is at the moment. And many of those countries have a fraction of trade income without the NYSE in operation. They are all pitching in and all are horrified.

No matter how you look at it, this event will change the way the US approaches foreign policy and airline security forever. The best that can happen at this point is that allies can be brought in tighter and countries that support terrorism may become motivated to discontinue such links and support the process of justice. This is the best we can hope for.

What I'm still stunned by is the success, accuracy, and coordinated execution of the terrorist plan. Before this event happened no one would believe that the 110 story twin towers could be reduced to a 5 story stack of crushed rubble. Within a few hours. Or that the pentagon did not have proper defence for this. Or that 4 hijackings would happen simultaneously for the purpose of suicide bombing. It is all so sick I can still hardly believe it.

It's a hard call

I can see some of the points GDayMate makes but on the other hand, when do you just say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH and just remove the people (assuming we could do that)

When there's a murder, some people believe it's not the murderer's fault. It's his background and therefore he should be "re-educated" and let back into society. Except that he kills again and then they use the same excuse to attempt to "re-educated" again. Meanwhile, 2+ people are dead.

But, there are other reasons to get rid of the murderer. The biggest being to protect society from him. He killed once, he doesn't get another chance PERIOD! There was some lines that just are not crossed.

So, now we have a large population of murderers. They've been at it for 40 or 50 years now, maybe more. Can they be "re-educated"? Would you be willing to fly with them or live next door etc??? When do you just say "they are too dangerous for society" and remove them from it?

That assumes to can identify "them". In this particular case, it seems to me "them" is a rather large group. Maybe 5000 people. Maybe 5000 people plus all the friends and family that support them. With a murderer, generally we believe his family does not approve of his actions. When they do approve then getting rid only the murderer will accomplish nothing except make his friends' and family's desire to "carry on the work" even stronger.

It seems to me the situation in the middle east is "unresolvable" so unless one side gives up and decides just to let it go, kind of like a company settling a case even if they believe they are in the right because it's cheaper and less troublesome to do so, then we will have this terrorism forever or until they are able to kill the entire world. (i.e., 12 monkey style)

It should be possible...

The difference between a murderer and a terrorist is that a murderer takes in account of the individuals he wish to eradicate, while a terrorist is removed from his targets and acts upon an objective that is beyond the scope of his victims. So while it might not be fair to presume it is a social issue if someone decides to shoot up an office he got fired from, you could however, blame social deconstruction for a terrorist act because it is a collective ideal that harvested these evil thoughts, and thus not an isolated wish or desire.

When the US retaliates, it will be only a short term solution. You will remove immediate threats from the heads of the terrorist group responsible, but given time, something like this will happen again because no security is absolutely impenetrable and a new, sharper breed of terrorist will come along. Where does that leave us then? Right back to where we started from. So instead of moving to solve the problem, it is left for our offsprings to deal with.

I'm not saying the problems in the middle east is solvable at the present date, deep seeded religious and ethnic difference will not be abolished within our generation or the next. But it is the responsibility of humanity to attempt to move in that direction. Who would have thought Soviet communism would fall in our time? Or there will be peace between Germany, Japan, and the rest of the world fifty years ago? Or slavery would be abolished century ago? The advantage of the human race is that regardless of how much we screw up in our life time, we will all die eventually, and with that, there is hope of reshaping the future as the next line of leaders evolve.