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Wonder what the journalists said to each other before meeting Hoffer. What snide remarks and thoughts they must of had of this manual laborer they would soon meet. Would of loved to have been present.


October 23, 1958 journal entry. From Between the Devil and the Dragon pp. 355-356


October 23

Today I have to meet journalists from Southeast Asia, and it prays on my mind. It seems to me that I shall be carefree when it is over.

6:30 P.M. It was a hell of a meeting. These people came to us to look and learn, but as men of words they were contemptuous of our practicalness and our addiction to acts rather than words. Since America was shaped by the masses, it seems to them that we have no civilization at all. I responded with an attack on the sort of civilization they cherish - a civilization shaped and dominated by scribes-and warned them to beware of American influence. For Americanization affects mainly the masses, stiffens their backbone, and infects them with a passion to act on their own, get their full share of the good things of life, and dispense with the tutelage of scribes and clerks. I remembered Saunders Redding, the American Negro in India, and the sort of baiting he had to endure without hitting back. I struck out in all directions. Bill Stucky of the American Press Institute said it was the first time anyone had talked back to them. They had needled and baited everyone from Dulles down. Americans don't know how to be rude to foreigners. I am glad I let them have it.
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"An activist is the person who cleans up the water, not the one claiming its dirty."
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing." Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Founder of Conservative Philosophy