OCR Text |
Show EDITORIAL: A Brief For The "American Way" Editorial Of The Week From: THE GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN TIMES When it comes time for the historian to review the economic and political trends of the fourth decade of the Twentieth Century in the United States he will be astounded over how little was contributed by the current American Amer-ican press and magazines to the public's knowledge of what really real-ly has constituted what is so flippantly called the "American way of life." That is to say, little as compared with the countless columns and billions of words on other ways, "isms" and "ologics." The same may be said for the output over the same period per-iod through the written and spoken word in our schools and colleges about the American way of life as compared with that of other countries, especially those that experimented with totalitarian totali-tarian or socialistic ideologies. An inquiring educator, cviden-ly cviden-ly conscious of this trend, recently re-cently conducted a one-man inquiry in-quiry into economic and political subjects discussed in the American Ameri-can public prints. What he discovered dis-covered was interesting, if not fllartnini "During one month in 1947," he wrote to a friend, "there was not a single article in any one of the country's fifty leading monthly or weekly magazines that concerned itself with what the United States has economically economical-ly or politically worth preserv-- preserv-- ing, During the same month nearly every one of the same magazines and weeklies published publish-ed endless columns about other countries, their peoples, their economies and standards of living. liv-ing. Whether these ways of life and economics were better or below be-low those of the United States was not referred to. If better, the reader was, of course, expected ex-pected to know that and why. If worse, that, too, was a matter of established expectancy." We have discussed this subject before in this column. We have said and repeat that we Americans Ameri-cans take too much for granted, that we are over-confident without with-out being intelligently informed and too smuggly steeped in well-being. well-being. We have been conterft . merely to hear or read about the "difference" in life elsewhere without taking into consideration the "why" of our more fortunate situation or the "why" our America is the best of all countries coun-tries in this world. The reason why so compara- tively little is said in our current literature in favor of the American Ameri-can way, as we understand the term, is that it is "old news." We in America are not interested in repetition unless, perchance, we arc. selling soap or tobacco or tooth powder in advertising columns or over the radio. Repeat Re-peat and repeat, is the slogan of the ad-writer. He knows the. value val-ue of repetition. If this be true, and it certainly is, why not do a little repeating on what America has woyth protecting, worth conserving, con-serving, worth cherishing? We laid this whole subject before be-fore a fairly prominent magazine maga-zine editor not long ago.. He was surprised when he read the paragraph para-graph in the letter referred to above. Since, he has written us that a magazine such as that over which he presides must give its readers what they want which is but a repetition of the same old saw that "the customer is always right." Apparently, he was himself not entirely sure of this customer inviolability for, since, he has puDixsnea one oi me most, compelling com-pelling articles that has ever appeared ap-peared on the subject of what we have here in America worth keeping. Was it David Harum who said he never could tell one lamppost lamp-post from another during the day for they all looked so much alike? Yes, it is only when at night the lamp has gone out that we miss the post. And well might that apply to what is said about the American Ameri-can way of life, of the system of free enterprise and about the right of everyone to make his own way without government interference. Since we were told that private enterprise was a relic of the horse-and-buggy days we have ceased to be interested inter-ested in how America has made itself what it is. That may Explain Ex-plain what is back of our present uncertainty, frustration and groping. We have not been reminded re-minded often enough that eternal eter-nal vigilance is ever the price of liberty. There is much that is good in the American way of life worth retelling- every day, every hour, every minute. Why not try it? If repetition can sell soap and tobacco and tooth powder pow-der it should be able to recapture recap-ture American confidence in "the American Way." |