The Hero vs The Hysterics & West, Wilson, William
A culture gets what is celebrates. With the nation obsessed over outbursts from Wilson, West and Williams (congress clown, raucous rapper and tennis terror), little attention was given to honor a hero who prevailed against hysterics: Norman Borlaug. He lived the ideal of 17th century Spanish philosopher Baltasar Gracian that one should aspire to be a hero, rather than merely appear one.
Despite renewed cries of Malthusian limits of our resources in the face of a growing population, Julian Simon had it right in challenging conventional wisdom with his own wisdom that the one inexhaustible resource is human ingenuity.
Here’s Greg Easterbrook writing in the WSJ on ‘The Man Who Defuse the ‘Population Bomb’: One of America's greatest heroes remains little known in his home country.”
Norman Borlaug arguably the greatest American of the 20th century died late Saturday after 95 richly accomplished years. The very personification of human goodness, Borlaug saved more lives than anyone who has ever lived. He was America's Albert Schweitzer: a brilliant man who forsook privilege and riches in order to help the dispossessed of distant lands. That this great man and benefactor to humanity died little-known in his own country speaks volumes about the superficiality of modern American culture.
Norman Borlaug
Born in 1914 in rural Cresco, Iowa, where he was educated in a one-room schoolhouse, Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work ending the India-Pakistan food shortage of the mid-1960s. He spent most of his life in impoverished nations, patiently teaching poor farmers in India, Mexico, South America, Africa and elsewhere the Green Revolution agricultural techniques that have prevented the global famines widely predicted when the world population began to skyrocket following World War II.
In 1999, the Atlantic Monthly estimated that Borlaug's efforts combined with those of the many developing-world agriculture-extension agents he trained and the crop-research facilities he founded in poor nations saved the lives of one billion human beings.
Despite renewed cries of Malthusian limits of our resources in the face of a growing population, Julian Simon had it right in challenging conventional wisdom with his own wisdom that the one inexhaustible resource is human ingenuity.
Here’s Greg Easterbrook writing in the WSJ on ‘The Man Who Defuse the ‘Population Bomb’: One of America's greatest heroes remains little known in his home country.”
Norman Borlaug arguably the greatest American of the 20th century died late Saturday after 95 richly accomplished years. The very personification of human goodness, Borlaug saved more lives than anyone who has ever lived. He was America's Albert Schweitzer: a brilliant man who forsook privilege and riches in order to help the dispossessed of distant lands. That this great man and benefactor to humanity died little-known in his own country speaks volumes about the superficiality of modern American culture.
Norman Borlaug
Born in 1914 in rural Cresco, Iowa, where he was educated in a one-room schoolhouse, Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work ending the India-Pakistan food shortage of the mid-1960s. He spent most of his life in impoverished nations, patiently teaching poor farmers in India, Mexico, South America, Africa and elsewhere the Green Revolution agricultural techniques that have prevented the global famines widely predicted when the world population began to skyrocket following World War II.
In 1999, the Atlantic Monthly estimated that Borlaug's efforts combined with those of the many developing-world agriculture-extension agents he trained and the crop-research facilities he founded in poor nations saved the lives of one billion human beings.
Labels: albert schqeitzer, congress, greg easterbrok, malthus, norman borlaug, Weekly Insider, williams, WSJ
posted by Josh Wolfe at
4:30 PM
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