Letters

Subject: Three Cheers for the USA
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 18:25:44 -0500

Tribute To The United States

This, from a Canadian newspaper, is worth sharing.
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 trenchant remarks as printed in the Congressional Record:

"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 the franc 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.