Sunday 18 December 2011

Originally broadcast on CHED Radio, Edmonton, Alberta Canada. November 1963. Labeled #04b


Do you ever feel like you’d like to build a high wall around your children? I have felt this way so often lately. In every paper or magazine you pick up you read of the moral breakdown of our society. You read about John Profumo and his shabby affairs with Mandy Rice Davies and Christine Keeler. You read of great football stars like Karras and Hornung being suspended for placing bets on the games they played. You see Liz Taylor and Richard Burton setting the cause of matrimony back two hundred years. You read about a great star like Frank Sinatra playing host to one of the kings of the underworld at a swank Nevada lodge, and again of Sinatra’s efforts to “buy off” officials who were sent to investigate the case. You see what I mean about building a wall around your children? What has happened to our morality? Is the word “honour” no longer in our vocabulary? Is there no longer a place for “integrity” in our society? With the examples we set before our children, is it any wonder they are cynical and disillusioned? There was a time when men fought duels for honour and nations went to war for it. Perhaps it couldn’t be defined even then but men and nations felt it in their bones. A man of honour didn’t lie, cheat , take bribes, offend the defenceless or give in to cowardice. Honour meant living up to one’s word and holding fast to one’s self respect. Today we are raising our children in a fast-buck, back street morality society, and my heart goes out to them. We are giving these kids stones when they need bread. Somehow this trend must be reversed. Integrity must again have some meaning. I often wonder how long our society will lie there in the gutter before it decides to pick itself up and breathe some fresh air again. 

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