Author
King Daevid MacKenzie
The attached is a piece I did locally on WLSU and then posted the script to some email lists I'm on. I've been encouraged to distribute it to other programs around the country. If you can use it, go right ahead, no strings attached. 3 minutes and 56 seconds.
On the night of the 22nd of November, 1963, as the world was reeling from the news that President Kennedy had been assassinated, one of the people whose responsibility it became to make sense of that insane act was Chet Huntley, one of the news anchormen on the NBC television network. Huntley took a minute out of his broadcast that night to speak personally on what he believed had been the root cause of the event. Much of what he said is, sadly, just as relevant to today's society as it was in 1963. Huntley said, in part:
"It's a logical assumption that hatred -- far left, far right, political, religious, economic or paranoid -- moved the person or persons who committed this combined act of murder and national sabotage. There is in this country, and has been for too long, an ominous and sickening popularity of hatred.
"Hatred is self-generating, contagious, it feeds upon itself and explodes into violence. It is no inexplicable phenomenon that there are pockets of hatred in our country, areas and communities where the disease is permitted or encouraged or given status by those who can and do influence others.
"You and I have heard in recent months someone say, "Those Kennedys ought to be shot." A well-known national magazine recently carried an article saying Chief Justice [Earl] Warren should be hanged. In its own defence, the magazine said it was only joking. But the Left has been equally bad.
"Tonight it might be the hope and resolve of all of us that we've heard the last of this kind of talk, jocular or serious, for the result is tragically the same."
We are now well over four decades past the night Chet Huntley made that statement. In that time span, we have become a nation identified as being either Red States or Blue States. We have become an electorate that has shifted from supporting the ideas of the person we vote for to voting for a person whose main opponent scares us more. We allow ourselves to be entertained by the weaknesses and moral shortcomings of those we do elect. We allow our discussion of government policy to occasionally include the dignification of, if not influence by, pundits who openly joke repeatedly about the murder of government officials, either our own or those of other nations, even occasionally suggesting such murder would please God.
May it have become time for each of us to re-evaluate how we as individuals have either permitted or contributed to the spread of this national illness? Do enough of us have the courage to search our own souls, find that spot that allows us to maintain respect for our fellow citizens and defend it against those who would destroy it to build their own base of social power?
Not one person anywhere has the same life experience as another. Yet, we constantly judge the value of those with whom we share this nation based upon the opinions, desires, hopes and fears they carry throughout their lives in turn based upon their experiences.
Are we actually willing to junk our republic because we don't respect enough of our neighbors to allow them to be represented? Who among us actually desires to see anyone else's citizenship devalued because of a difference of opinion?
Can it be said honestly that we have all conducted ourselves as if we deserve a free society?
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