The Grand Appeal For American Greatness by Robert Socha

With all eyes and ears clamoring for election data, getting out the vote, and going to the polls, I had the privilege of coming across a recording by Paul Harvey, who, in 1965, wrote and recorded a grand appeal. The full 2,000-word text is worth your time, or you can listen to his truncated eight-minute broadcast here. Nevertheless, I wanted to publish the conclusion to remind ourselves of the great American frontier, the promise of self-government and liberty, and resolve to flush out the same corruption and internal decay that destroyed Rome from within, restore to ourselves the grit to eke out our existence and prosper. Here is Mr. Harvey’s conclusion:

How come after thousands of years of experiment our new nation has come so far, so fast?

All this in less than two hundred (fifty) years. What is the secret of our success? Well, I think it had to do with a basic American’s Creed. Perhaps it never passed a pioneer’s lips in this form, but if it had I think he would have said something like this: “I believe in my God, in my Country and in Myself.” I know that sounds like a trite too simple thing to say, and yet it’s a rare man today who will dare to stand up and say “I believe in my God and my Country and in Myself.” (And in that order.) In this little bitty instant, as historical time is measured, our 7% of the Earth’s population has come to possess more than half of all the world’s good things. How come?

Well sir, when that early pioneer turned his eyes toward the west he didn’t demand that somebody else look after him. He didn’t demand a free education. He didn’t demand a guaranteed rocking chair at eventide. He didn’t demand that somebody else take care of him if he got ill or got old. There was an old-fashioned philosophy in those days that a man was supposed to provide for his own and for his own future. He didn’t demand a maximum amount of money for a minimum amount of work. Nor did he expect pay for no work at all… Come to think of it he didn’t demand anything. That hard-handed pioneer just looked out there at the rolling plains stretching away to the tall green mountains and then lifted his eyes to the blue skies and said “Thank you God. Now I can take it from here.” That spirit isn’t dead in our country, it’s dormant. It’s been discredited in some circles, driven underground, but it isn’t dead.

It’s just that a few seasons ago politicians baiting their hooks with free barbeque and trading a Ponzi promise for votes began telling us, “we don’t want opportunity anymore, we want security.” “We don’t want opportunity” they said, “We want security.” And they said it so often we came to believe them. We wanted security. And they gave us chains and we were secure. Suddenly with our constitutional guarantees depleted, with our national character eroding away, with our tax laws penalizing those who would dare to prosper, with workers concentrating on how little they can get by with instead of how much they can produce. Suddenly we looked overhead one day to discover that the first tin moon in space was a Russian accomplishment. That free men dragging their feet had been outdistanced by slave workers dragging their chains. And we were sore afraid.

Perhaps this was a disguised blessing, too. Maybe a dramatic accomplishment by this cold war adversary was necessary to get us off our dead centers and back to work again. If we can revive in ourselves, then in our youth, something of that basic American’s Creed, the horizon has never ever been so limitless. For Man stands now on the threshold of his highest adventure of all: his first faltering footsteps into space. Twenty years from today, half of the products you will be using in your everyday living aren’t even in the dictionary yet. We’ve got it made. If we just keep on keeping on. We’ve got it made – and if we don’t? We will follow those other great nation-states of history into the graveyard of ignominious oblivion. History promises only this for certain – We Will Get Exactly What We Deserve.”

I have listened to and read this repeatedly over the past few days because it has stirred something in my soul that cries out for those things that are good and true, for hard work and self-determination, and for holding our government accountable even if it means handing them a new charter on the edge of a sword. Go vote, encourage others to do so in favor of returning to Constitutional chains, free speech, religion, and assembly, gun rights, lower taxation, election integrity, secure boarders, but most importantly: Trust in the Lord with all of your Heart, lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him, and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6.