Originally broadcast on CHED radio - Monday, September 26, 1960

How many times a day has this happened to you? You meet someone perhaps over coffee, and you say… "How are ya Ed"? The reply… "Not bad… how’s yourself"?  "Great whether eh”? “Yea, great”. “Could sure use six weeks of this eh”?… “Yea”.  “Well…see ya Ed… say hello to Joan”.  “Yea…see ya”. I know… it's all too familiar and it has happened to you 100 times a week. Why is it that we have nothing to say in this day and age? These are the most amazing, interesting, dynamic, important years the world has ever known, yet people still have nothing to say. They read the sports page and the comics… they buy the cheap paper-backs and the girly books by the millions… they sit in front of the one-eyed monster night after night looking at the same old western plots and the same old dance routines week after week. If two couples get together they seldom discuss anything more than the kids, the neighbors and their taxes. THE WORST POSSIBLE FATE A PERSON CAN FACE TODAY IS TO FIND HIMSELF IN A POSITION WHERE HE IS EXPECTED TO HAVE AND EXPRESS AN OPINION ON SOME MATTER OF CONSEQUENCE. How often have you heard someone say, “I really don't know anything about it, but”….. and then offer some apologetic "out" on the subject. Unless people start to learn again, unless they start to care again, unless they start to talk again, unless we start to think again, I don't know where we are headed. We must become an informed nation. Our children must learn how to think and reason for themselves. It is time for civic thinking. It is time for you to speak up against the bad appointment or the shoddy referendum regardless of what level they may occur. It is time that you demanded of your representative that  he be representative. We won the war yesterday, let's not lose the peace today because we just don't care or can't be bothered. Here are some facts that may help set you free from your complacency. The US Congress took only eight minutes to declare war on Germany at the start of the last world conflict. In the same session it took only five minutes to declare war on Japan but between that war and the one before it, the world took 20 years trying to declare peace and then couldn't do it. Frightening though, isn't it.