There Are Two Kinds of People – Which Kind Are You? 11 April, 2012
Posted by admin in : 1961,HISTORY,OPINION,READER'S DIGEST,SHORT READ,WAKE UP , comments closedReader’s Digest – September 1961
Reprinted from This Week Magazine (May 28, 1961) – Roger Hull President, Mutual of New York
Have you ever asked yourself this question: If every citizen performed just as you do, where would the country be? What if every fellow worked at his job the way you work, showed the same interest, the same diligence, the same faithfulness, the same skill and discipline? What would happen to our country?
Someone has aptly said that there are really only two kinds of people: those who are part of the problem, and those who are part of the solution.
Do you think only in terms of yourself – how much you can make, what you can get out of life? Those who think that way are definitely part of the problem.
Or are you concerned with the contribution you can make – how much you can give, how much you can put in? People like that are part of the answer.
Some people treat life like a slot machine, trying to put in as little as possible, and always hoping to hit the jackpot. But I believe that people are wiser, Happier and have more inner peace when they think of life as a solid, intelligent investment from which they receive in terms of what they put in. And by so doing they help preserve our free society.
A List 10 April, 2012
Posted by admin in : LIST,READER'S DIGEST , comments closedToo many articles – Too little time
This “list” consists of various Reader’s Digest issues with various reads available. Listed here to demonstrate how much “yesterday” seems just like “today” and to let you know what’s available. Send me an e-mail with the article and the month and year it appeared in and I’ll try and add it to this blog.
March – 1953
Congress Can Stop Government Waste – Alfred Steinberg
Heroes of Medical Experiments – Colliers
Mergenthaler’s Wonderful Machhine – American Printer
Do the Mobs Dictate Your Crime Laws? – Lester Velie
October – 1961
The Church, the Government and the Schools – Life
Warning to the U.N.: Admit Red China at Your Peril! – Adm. Arthur W. Radford
America-Beware of the Welfare State – Graham Hutton
Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too? – “Excellence”
What’s Happened to Patriotism? – Max Rafferty
We Can Sell Our Way out of the Farm Problem – Farm Journal
July – 1952
High Taxes Cause Inflation – Frank Wilbur Main
Where I Stand – Elia Kazan in New York Times
Croesus of Kuwait – Edwin Muller
Butter vs. Margarine – Changing Times
The American Way of Life – Ladies’ Home Journal
Our Inexhaustible Resources – Christian Science Monitor
Slim Chances for the G.O.P., Unless . . . – Stanley High
November – 1960
America, Wake Up! – Gen Carlos P. Romulo
Your Mind Can Make You Well – Special Request Feature
How to Win an Election – Allen Drury
Who Speaks for Labor? – “The Conscience of a Conservative”
Why Europe Turned Away From Socialism – The Freeman
Where Will Tomorrow’s Doctors Come From? – Time
Red China Reaches for World Power – Leland Stowe
June – 1949
“That We Might Learn to Live as Bravely As They Died . . .” – An Address
Three Billion Dollars a Year for Federal Waste – Barron’s
May – 1953
Truth About the Immigration Act – Rep. Francis E. Walter
“Too Much Unnecessary Surgery” – U.S. News
From Washington Back to You? – William Hard
Let This Tax Die – and Stay Dead! – Frank Wilbur Main
Too Many Lawmakers Spoil the State – Lester Velie
March – 1944
Will Europe Go Communist After the War? – Saturday Evening Post
Tom Paine, Crusader for Common Sense – New Leader
How We Ought to Elect Presidents – Cosmopolitan
October – 1944
Will the CIO Capture the Democratic Party? – Saturday Evening Post
September – 1964
Let’s Make This an Honest Election – Bill Surface
Take the Handcuffs off Our Police! – Frederic Sondern, Jr.
How We Should Pray? – Special Request Feature
Is NATO Obsolete? – Saturday Evening Post
November – 1971
The Agony of East Pakistan – David Reed & John E. Frazer
Which Way the World Council of Churches? – Clarence W. Hall
The Soviet Plot to Destroy Mexico – John Barron
April – 1977
Resolve the Middle East Crisis – Now! – William E. Griffith
Needed – Tax Reform to Create Jobs – Rep. Jack Kemp
Can Public-Employee Unions Be Controlled? – Kenneth Y. Tomlinson
So Long, Volunteers – Erma Bombeck
Congressional Perquisites – CBS Evening News
Roots (Part I)
May – 1977
Our Multibillion-Dollar Medicaid Scandal – Dan Thomasson & Carl West
We’ve Got Too Much Law! – Newsweek
Making Democracy Work (The Politics of Promises & Confessions of a Town Councilmen)
Post Watergate Morality, a Dubious Legacy – New York Times Magazine
Margaret Thatcher: Britain’s Next Prime Minister? – Claire Sterling
Roots (Part II)
October – 1964
The Great Manpower Grab – Rep. Frank T. Bow
New Warmth Between Protestants and Catholics – The Rev. John A. O’Brien
November – 1950
Prosperity as a Weapon – Life and Fortune
What’s to Be Done With TV? – Saturday Review of Literature
Old Age is Your Problem – Tomorrow
Women Aren’t Men – Atlantic Monthly
Do What You Want and Live Longer – American Magazine
Labor’s Case Against Public Ownership – Joseph A. Fisher
Dangerous Decline of Political Morality – Sen. Robert A. Taft
She Makes Our Money – Baltimore Sun
April – 1951
Fog Around the Fifth Amendment – James Burnham
Answer to our European Critics – Frances Cardinal Spellman
October – 1956
Our Tax Laws Make Us Dishonest – Saturday Evening Post
What Happens When We Pray? – Dr. Robert J. McCracken
Foreign Aid Mania – Newsweek
My Last Best Days on Earth – Farm Journal
Seven Economic Fallacies
Doctors Should Tell the Truth – Saturday Evening Post
Are Juries Giving Away Too Much Money? – Kiwanis
September – 1944
I Object to My Union in Politics – William E. Mullins
“Each One Teach One” – J. P. McEvoy
How to Win an Election – American Magazine
What is the Spirit of Liberty? – Life
July – 1962
The Trouble With the State Department – Saturday Evening Post
Here Comes Worldwide Television! – Kiwanis Magazine
Union Monopolies – Power out of Hand – New York Herald Tribune
The Great Organic-Gardening Myth – Harland Manchester
May – 1947
Our Present Dishonest Federal Old Age Pension Plan – John T. Flynn
An Alternative to Big Government – David E. Lilienthal
January – 1944
Transport Wonder in Iran – Business Week
The Only Path to Tomorrow – Ayn Rand
The Proven Merit of a Solar Home – Baltimore Sunday Sun
Pipe-Line Paragon – Forbes
October – 1958
Can We Escape a Ruinous Inflation? – Senator Harry F. Byrd
Our Biggest Privileged Class – Harper’s Magazine
We Must Be Ready to Fight Limited Wars – Lt. Gen. James M. Gavin
Why Should Labor Leaders Play Politics With the Workers’ Money? – W. L. White
Known – June – 1962!!
Lung Cancer and Cigarettes – The Latest Findings – Lois Mattos Miller
Who Will Be First on the Moon? – Newsweek
A Way to Keep America Growing – U.S. News & World Report
What Price Medical Care for the Aged? – Rep. Thomas B. Curtis
January – 1953
The Great Unwatched – Lester Velie
What is a Catholic? – Look
“A Reason to Live and a Reason to Die” – New York Times Magazine
The Capitol – “Constitution in Stone” – Donald Culross Peattie
This Tax Costs More Than it Earns – Frank Wilbur Main
March – 1948
Shall the Churches Invade the Schools? – From a speech by Agnes E. Meyer
If the People Wrote the Tax Laws – Stanley High
April – 1952
“After a Long Illness” – Bruce Barton
Let’s Abolish False Labels – New Canaan Advertiser
Why We Fail the Taxpayers – A Federal Administrator
It Looks As If We All Want Inflation – Atlantic Monthly
Will type more of these at a later date – Never Ending Stack – Two Shelves haven’t even been touched lol
In Answer To Our European Critics 1 April, 2012
Posted by admin in : 1954,HISTORY,READER'S DIGEST , comments closedReader’s Digest – April 1954
By His Eminence Francis Cardinal Spellman – Archbishop of New York
This appeal for European understanding is from an address made by Cardinal Spellman in Brussels. Cardinal Spellman has given the rights to this address to the USO Cathedral Canteen, which is open to service men at all times.
A matter which has subjected America to widespread criticism in Europe has been its Congressional inquiries into the infiltration of Government by Communists.
Judging from the hysterical tone of the criticism, one would imagine that it is no longer possible in America to keep one’s good name. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are still a free people who cherish freedom. No American uncontaminated by Communism has lost his good name because of Congressional hearings on un-American activities.
However, there are many individuals who have seriously compromised themselves by a flat refusal to state whether they are now or have been Communists. It is impossible for me to understand why any American should refuse to declare himself free of Communist affiliation, unless he has something to hide. In that even the deserves to be held in suspicion because he constitutes a threat to our country’s freedom, which has been won at too great a cost to be lightly lost. There is no reason to doubt the aims of the Communists. The history of Communist treachery all lover the world is tragic and the subjugation by them of one country after another makes grim reading.
Our American Government would be utterly naive if it did not take all the necessary steps to preserve its own existence. It has the right to know the kind of men it employs. It has a right to expect that its citizens will not have a divided loyalty. The Communist has such a divided loyalty and he has given abundant proof of the treachery such a divided loyalty spawns. We have seen how he bides his time, using all the words and forms of free men only to mask his evil intent until occasion is given him for betrayal. We do not intend to give him that occasion if we can prevent it.
Congressional inquiries into Communist activities in the United States are not the result of any mad legislative whim. There are strong reasons for these inquires and we thank God that they have begun while there is still time to do something about it. In too many instances the awareness of Communist intrigue has come when it is too late. The anguished protests against” McCarthyism” are not going to dissuade Americans from their desire to see Communists exposed and removed from positions where they can carry out their nefarious plans.
If American prestige is going to suffer in Europe because of our understandable desire to keep our free society immune from Communist subversion, then it seems more a reflection upon European standards of honor and patriotism than on ours.
What The President Wants
Posted by admin in : 1953,HISTORY,POLITICS,PRESIDENT,READER'S DIGEST , comments closedReader’s Digest – April 1953
Above and beyond politics, Dwight Eisenhower hopes to inspire a spiritual reawakening in America
This is what I found out about religion. It gives you courage to make the decisions you must make in a crisis and then the confidence to leave the result to a higher Power. Only by trust in God can a man carrying responsibilities find repose. - Dwight D. Eisenhower.
By Stanley High
In the vast flow of words that have been written about Dwight Eisenhower, one aspect has received little attention – his longtime hopes and purposes for America. Better than administrative policies or legislative prescriptions, those hopes and purposes reveal the stature and character of the man we elected President. They are a guide to what, above and beyond politics, may take place during his Presidency. His commitment to them is deeper and more determined than to any partisan objectives, and he believes they are the terms by which, in history, his Administration will have to pass muster.
There is nothing “off the record” in what the President himself calls his “long thoughts” about America. They are the plainest thread that runs through all his speeches. They are the most frequently recurring theme of his conversations. He has made them the solemn basis of his charge to the men and women he has called to be on his team.
By some current standards, the President is “old fashioned” in what he most deeply believes. He is as “out of date” as the copybook maxims, he stressed in his campaign:
“Honesty is the best policy”; “He that goes a-borrowing, goes a-sorrowing”; “A man is know by the company he keeps”; “Birds of a feather flock together”; “A penny saved is a penny earned.”
Perhaps these homilies have of recently been fashionable in Washington, or elsewhere, but who can read them without feeling that it would have been good for all of us if they had been?
In today’s atmosphere of pseudo-intellectualism, the President’s profoundest beliefs perhaps seem “corny.” He is no doubt corny when he talks, as he has, about “the extraordinary virtues” of his parents; of the fact that they were “thrifty, economical, honest”; of the “lusty influence of the Bible in their lives”; of “how I sat at my mother’s knee”; of the story of Abraham Lincoln walking miles to return a few cents he had over-charged a customer that day in the store.
The extent to which these homely virtues are out of date is proof to the President of what has happened to this country. He believes that what has been wrong with the American Government is only symptomatic of things gone wrong in America and with Americans. He knows the symptoms require immediate treatment. He believes the cure requires basic changes in American thought and direction. These changes will produce political and economic consequences. But they are not, themselves, political or economic. They are moral and spiritual.
In one preconvention conversation General Eisenhower remarked; “From the way I’m talking and from what I’d like to see happen, it looks as though I should have been a preacher.” In a nonecclesiastical sense, it is a preacher’s job he has cut out for himself.
What President Eisenhower wants for America is a revival of religious faith that will produce a rededication to religious values and conduct He wants this, first, because he is a religious man. He is ot outwardly pious, and he seldom talks about religion in personal terms. I do not know how he prays or how often. But from his unembarrassed expressions of belief in prayer, I am sure that he does pray. I do not know how often he reads the red-leather Bible he keeps by his bed. But from his familiarity with the Scriptures. I am sure he reads it. His Cabinet members and advisers were expected to be thre with their families. They were – 180 of them.
He has said that in selecting the members of his Cabinet he wanted to find out not only what their abilities were but what, as men, they were dedicated to. And his inauguration prayer, written in long hand before that morning’s service of worship, was not alone for himself but for “my future associates . . . that Thou wilt make full and complete our dedication . . . ”
The President’s top associates can have little doubt about the spiritual purposes to which he believes his Administration must be dedicated. On January 12 he called his Cabinet and chief assistants into a preinaugural conference in New York. When they were seated at luncheon together, the President-elected arose at the head of the table. He expressed confidence in the capacities of the people assembled there. He felt they were among the best America could provide for the job ahead. But he was sure they would agree with him that, for even the best, the job ahead was too big to undertake without the help of Almighty God. He then turned to his Secretary of Agriculture, Ezra Benson, and asked him, a prominent Mormon, to lead them in a prayer.
But it is not only because he is personally religious that the President give first importance to the reviving of religious faith. He believes that the “godly virtues” – those extolled in the copybook maxims – account for America’s beginning, its growth in strength, material well-being and social progress. He believes that, except in a renewal of that faith and those virtues, there is no answer for the future.
“You can’t explain free government in any other terms than religious. The Founding Fathers had to refer to the Creator in order to make their revolutionary experiment make sense; it was because ‘all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights’ that men could dare to be free. They wrote their religious faith into our founding documents, stamped their trust in God on the faces of their coins and currency and put it boldly at the base of our institutions. And when they drew up their bold Bill of Rights, where did they put Freedom of Worship? First, in the cornerstone position. That was no accident.”
Before and during the campaign Eisenhower frequently talked about the strength America must have if our freedom is to be preserved and extended. In his three kinds of strength, he insisted that the “spiritual” should come first, not as a possible climax after the “economic” and “military.”
“Our forefathers proved,” he said, “that only a people strong in godliness is a people strong enough to overcome tyranny and make themselves and others free. Today, it is ours to prove that our own faith, perpetually renewed is equal to the challenge of today’s tyrants.”
At one point in the campaign, some of his associates were a little concerned by what they regarded as too much religion in his politics. Lest he be accused of overdoing it, they urged him for a few speeches to skip the spiritual note. At that proposal the General was first 0puzzled and then irritated. “Gentlemen,” he told them sharply, “you misjudge the American people.”
“I’m sure of one thing,” he has said, “There is a great spiritual yearning, a hunger among the people of this country. And I meet more and more people of this country. And I meet more and more people who are not ashamed to express it.”
In the political sense, General Eisenhower had no ambition for the Presidency. In the political sense, he now has no ambition simply to go through four or eight years and thence into history as the 34th President of the United States. He does, however, have one consuming ambition: He is determined to use his influence and his office to help make this period a spiritual turning point in American, and thereby to recover the strength, the values and the conduct which a vital faith produces in a people.
Four such a New Era much more will be required than the President’s own dedication, more than his declarations and example – powerful and, in recent history, unprecedented as such White House leadership will be.
A great deal will be required of all Americans who believe as the President believes and who want, for themselves and America, what he wants. It is not too soon for these Americans to make it clear that, for them, last November 4 was more than just another election, and that the man they elected must not be cut down to the size and shape of partisan politics.
What the President Wants 18 March, 2012
Posted by admin in : 1953,HISTORY,Political,PRESIDENT,RELIGION,WAKE UP AMERICA , comments closedReader’s Digest – April 1953
Above and beyond politics, Dwight Eisenhower hopes to inspire a spiritual reawakening in America
This is what I found out about religion. It gives you courage to make the decisions you must make in a crisis and then the confidence to leave the result to a higher Power. Only by trust in God can a man carrying responsibilities find repose. - Dwight D. Eisenhower.
By Stanley High
In the vast flow of words that have been written about Dwight Eisenhower, one aspect has received little attention – his longtime hopes and purposes for America. Better than administrative policies or legislative prescriptions, those hopes and purposes reveal the stature and character of the man we elected President. They are a guide to what, above and beyond politics, may take place during his Presidency. His commitment to them is deeper and more determined than to any partisan objectives, and he believes they are the terms by which, in history, his Administration will have to pass muster.
There is nothing “off the record” in what the President himself calls his “long thoughts” about America. They are the plainest thread that runs through all his speeches. They are the most frequently recurring theme of his conversations. He has made them the solemn basis of his charge to the men and women he has called to be on his team.
By some current standards, the President is “old fashioned” in what he most deeply believes. He is as “out of date” as the copybook maxims, he stressed in his campaign:
“Honesty is the best policy”; “He that goes a-borrowing, goes a-sorrowing”; “A man is know by the company he keeps”; “Birds of a feather flock together”; “A penny saved is a penny earned.”
Perhaps these homilies have of recently been fashionable in Washington, or elsewhere, but who can read them without feeling that it would have been good for all of us if they had been?
In today’s atmosphere of pseudo-intellectualism, the President’s profoundest beliefs perhaps seem “corny.” He is no doubt corny when he talks, as he has, about “the extraordinary virtues” of his parents; of the fact that they were “thrifty, economical, honest”; of the “lusty influence of the Bible in their lives”; of “how I sat at my mother’s knee”; of the story of Abraham Lincoln walking miles to return a few cents he had over-charged a customer that day in the store.
The extent to which these homely virtues are out of date is proof to the President of what has happened to this country. He believes that what has been wrong with the American Government is only symptomatic of things gone wrong in America and with Americans. He knows the symptoms require immediate treatment. He believes the cure requires basic changes in American thought and direction. These changes will produce political and economic consequences. But they are not, themselves, political or economic. They are moral and spiritual.
In one preconvention conversation General Eisenhower remarked; “From the way I’m talking and from what I’d like to see happen, it looks as though I should have been a preacher.” In a nonecclesiastical sense, it is a preacher’s job he has cut out for himself.
What President Eisenhower wants for America is a revival of religious faith that will produce a rededication to religious values and conduct He wants this, first, because he is a religious man. He is ot outwardly pious, and he seldom talks about religion in personal terms. I do not know how he prays or how often. But from his unembarrassed expressions of belief in prayer, I am sure that he does pray. I do not know how often he reads the red-leather Bible he keeps by his bed. But from his familiarity with the Scriptures. I am sure he reads it. His Cabinet members and advisers were expected to be thre with their families. They were – 180 of them.
He has said that in selecting the members of his Cabinet he wanted to find out not only what their abilities were but what, as men, they were dedicated to. And his inauguration prayer, written in long hand before that morning’s service of worship, was not alone for himself but for “my future associates . . . that Thou wilt make full and complete our dedication . . . ”
The President’s top associates can have little doubt about the spiritual purposes to which he believes his Administration must be dedicated. On January 12 he called his Cabinet and chief assistants into a preinaugural conference in New York. When they were seated at luncheon together, the President-elected arose at the head of the table. He expressed confidence in the capacities of the people assembled there. He felt they were among the best America could provide for the job ahead. But he was sure they would agree with him that, for even the best, the job ahead was too big to undertake without the help of Almighty God. He then turned to his Secretary of Agriculture, Ezra Benson, and asked him, a prominent Mormon, to lead them in a prayer.
But it is not only because he is personally religious that the President give first importance to the reviving of religious faith. He believes that the “godly virtues” – those extolled in the copybook maxims – account for America’s beginning, its growth in strength, material well-being and social progress. He believes that, except in a renewal of that faith and those virtues, there is no answer for the future.
“You can’t explain free government in any other terms than religious. The Founding Fathers had to refer to the Creator in order to make their revolutionary experiment make sense; it was because ‘all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights’ that men could dare to be free. They wrote their religious faith into our founding documents, stamped their trust in God on the faces of their coins and currency and put it boldly at the base of our institutions. And when they drew up their bold Bill of Rights, where did they put Freedom of Worship? First, in the cornerstone position. That was no accident.”
Before and during the campaign Eisenhower frequently talked about the strength America must have if our freedom is to be preserved and extended. In his three kinds of strength, he insisted that the “spiritual” should come first, not as a possible climax after the “economic” and “military.”
“Our forefathers proved,” he said, “that only a people strong in godliness is a people strong enough to overcome tyranny and make themselves and others free. Today, it is ours to prove that our own faith, perpetually renewed is equal to the challenge of today’s tyrants.”
At one point in the campaign, some of his associates were a little concerned by what they regarded as too much religion in his politics. Lest he be accused of overdoing it, they urged him for a few speeches to skip the spiritual note. At that proposal the General was first 0puzzled and then irritated. “Gentlemen,” he told them sharply, “you misjudge the American people.”
“I’m sure of one thing,” he has said, “There is a great spiritual yearning, a hunger among the people of this country. And I meet more and more people of this country. And I meet more and more people who are not ashamed to express it.”
In the political sense, General Eisenhower had no ambition for the Presidency. In the political sense, he now has no ambition simply to go through four or eight years and thence into history as the 34th President of the United States. He does, however, have one consuming ambition: He is determined to use his influence and his office to help make this period a spiritual turning point in American, and thereby to recover the strength, the values and the conduct which a vital faith produces in a people.
Four such a New Era much more will be required than the President’s own dedication, more than his declarations and example – powerful and, in recent history, unprecedented as such White House leadership will be.
A great deal will be required of all Americans who believe as the President believes and who want, for themselves and America, what he wants. It is not too soon for these Americans to make it clear that, for them, last November 4 was more than just another election, and that the man they elected must not be cut down to the size and shape of partisan politics.