Agenda - Council - 07/27/1982 - Laserfiche WebLink

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,i I ! I I I I I I ! ! I I I ! I I editor's scra chp d' In this buslnesJ of "examine his con- focus while ! was investigating -- and science" or climb a working on that journalistic advoca- mental hill to get a Sera Sudan story on cy -- such aa pructl- perspective of what today's front page. ced by the Star-Trlb he's doing. Sera Sudan -- that's and theDailyAmeri- the project a group can, I think the man Anyway, I often of nicepeoplefroma who sets the policy wonder how my town in India set up and determines the attitudes of govern- for theirownprivate emphasis has a meat frugalitydcve- welfare organiza- professional man- loped, tion to help the date to frequently It all came into slummers. Harvey Thinks Neediest Nation Is Our OWn This president, like most of his recent predecessors, has started traveling the world. Everywhere, expressing his empathy for poor people -- as indeed he should. Indeed he should. The poor countries of the worl~ do need help. But let's start with the poorest first. The only country which is more than a trillion dollars in debt - is ours! Dorothy Smith of Coffee Creek Road in Edmond, Oklahoma, wrote the other day to remind me that every man, woman and child in the United States is now $30,000 in debt and our Robin Hood Congress is blithely passing that horrendous burden along to our children and theirs... The world's gimme-gimme's demand their "rights" to handouts - what about our '~righta"? One hundred forty other c6untries want to be called "developing countries", though most of them had a thousand-year head start on us! The~, are "backward" countries, and the sooner we start calling things by their Hght names the better we'll be able to deal with realities. Backward people in back- ward countries who used to be grateful for help are now demanding it. Those 140 countries are three-quarters of the world's popul~,tion, yet all together they produce only one- fifth of the world's production. America was nourished to world supremacy 'l~y a philosophy of enlightened selfishness: "Charity begins at home." , It still should; indeed right now the neediest nation is our own. Once upon a time we led the world. From the 1770's to the early I~0~s everyone else, every- where else, eagerly followed our example. Watching our example of individual liberty and self- government, the French threw off the yoke ' of rapacious aristocracy; England initiated sweeping democratic reforms; Mexico, Central America, South America -- watching our example -- freed themselves from Spain. We had not sent them any guns, any butter or any money. But what we had done was to mind our own business so well that we were a lighthouse for the world. I believe we could be that again. But our nation, overburden- ed with debt, suffering strangulation by taxation, exhausting its resources - can be no help to the rest of the world either as a leader or as a crutch. President Reagan's nn- nounced objective in undertak- ing rece,t foreign travel was to enhance his image as a "world leader". That is not the office to which he was elected.