Fellow Americans,
In 1965, American radio host Paul Harvey gave an immense warning to the American people about the fate of the nation. “We Were Warned: Freedom to Chains” is a short film about the the parallels between the warning Harvey gave over fifty years ago, and today with the Socialist influences in government and society.
“…ours is not the first good government to arise on the world stage, there have been several. Rome, Spain, Greece, China, and others, and each enjoyed about a hundred and fifty years at its zenith, and that’s just about our time in the new world, and then each decayed away. Not one of them was ever destroyed by anybody else’s marching legions. Each rotted away morally, socially, culturally, economically simultaneously. You know one of the most cruel paradoxes’ of history is this, because each was a good government it bore bountiful fruit and when it bore bountiful fruit the people got fat, and when they got fat they got lazy, and when they got lazy they began to want to absolve themselves of personal responsibility and turn over to government to do for them things which traditionally they had been doing for themselves.
“At first there appears to be nothing wrong asking government to perform some extra service for you, but if you ask government for extra services government, in order to perform its increasing function, has to get bigger, right? And as government gets bigger, in order to support its increasing size it has to, what? Tax the individual more, so the individual gets littler. And to collect the increased taxes requires more tax collectors so the government gets bigger and in order to pay the additional tax collectors, it has to tax the individual more so the government gets bigger and the individual get littler and the government gets bigger and the individual gets littler, until the government is all powerful and the individual is hardly anything at all. The government is all powerful and the people are cattle.
“When the early American pioneer first turned his eyes toward the west, there were only Indian trails or traces as they were called, for him to foll’er through the wilderness. 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.
“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.”
May God bless you and the United States of America!
Dan Landi
Kidder, MO
See Original Letter The Editor on The Caldwell County News
Below is a PDF of the original transcript of Paul Harvey’s radio broadcast:
Paul-Harvey-Freedom-To-Chains-Transcript-1
