The Politically Incorrect Show - 27/03/2001

[Music - Die Fledermaus]

Good afternoon, Kaya Oraaa & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show on the free speech network, Radio Pacific, for Tuesday March 27, proudly sponsored by Neanderton Nicotine Ltd., the show that says bugger the politicians & bureaucrats & all the other bossyboot busybodies who try to run our lives with our money; that stands tall for free enterprise, achievement, profit, & excellence, against the state-worshippers in our midst; that stands above all for the most sacred thing in the universe, the liberty of the human individual.

[Music up, music down!]

Over the weekend I received an e-mail about heroes. Here's part of what it said:

"There's a psychological need that I've found modern culture tragically incapable of fulfilling.

"I have found that the world today is tragically short on heroes.

"Literature has been a solace. Roark, Francisco d'Anconia, Valentine Michael Smith, James diGriz - literary men who are so committed to living and living passionately that one cannot help but be lifted into ecstasy by the mention of their names.

"There are moments, when reading a description of Frisco in Atlas Shrugged, the image of the world changes to one of literally endless possibility and potential, where evil is powerless and the world is as it should be. My goal in life is for that not to be merely a state which comes and goes, but which is the normal, everyday state of mankind.

"Fiction couldn't last forever as a source of inspiration. Neither could music and its fountain of emotion, though both forms of art are as far as I am concerned completely indispensable. At some point, I began looking for heroes in a more real form. The need that I have discovered is not just passion, but real, passionate men and women."

This really got me thinking. I too, crave heroes. I too find that most of mine are either dead or exist only in literature or movies. Has humanity indeed grown smaller, or do we just glamourise people we have no possibility of meeting, I wondered. Then I opened the new issue of The Free Radical & instantly confronted a whole gallery of heroes! Each of the men & women who contribute to its pages is an exemplar of just that combination of reason, passion, steadfastness & courage that my e-mailer is looking for. Chris Lewis' guts & stickability took him all the way to Wimbledon. Joseph Rowlands set himself the goal of becoming a millionaire by the age of 30; he's not yet 30 ... & he's a millionaire! Cameron Pritchard, not yet 20, smites the bad guys of modern philosophy with a deftness & courage Russell Crowe would be proud of. Robert Winefield salutes that recently-departed hero, Don Bradman. Hooch Helen is already a legend. Peter Cresswell works tirelessly for freedom & gives me invaluable advice as assistant-editor (he HAS to be a hero to put up with me!). Joy Faulkner has courage pouring out of her ears. And so on ... my apologies to those I haven't singled out.

So yes, there are heroes in our midst - "real, passionate men & women," fighting for the world as it might be & should be. It's too bad that we too often take them for granted. As the song says, "We don't know what we've got till it's gone." To all of these people, named & unnamed, this editorial is my thank you & my salute.

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