Paul Harvey, the legendary ABC radio commentator, spoke about the threat posed by the cultural wars in the United States of America, but the essay -- entitled “If I Were the Devil” -- was written by the late Harvey more than 50 years ago on April 3, 1965.
His essay begins in the Garden of Eden where he’s explains that the Prince of Darkness wants the ripest apple on the tree – the United States.
Harvey then goes on to list the threats to the republic via its cultural decay, including making what is bad, good and what is good “square.”
The devil would convince people, Harvey said, that “the Bible is a myth,” and he’d warn them not to be “extreme” when it comes to their faith, patriotism or “moral conduct.”
“If I were the devil, I’d educate authors in how to make lurid literature exciting so that anything else would appear dull and uninteresting,” Harvey said. “I’d threaten TV with dirtier movies and vice versa.
“And then, if I were the devil, I’d get organized,” Harvey said. “I’d infiltrate unions and urge more loafing and less work, because idle hands usually work for me.
“I’d peddle narcotics to whom I could,” Harvey said.
Harvey said the devil would say he’d “evict God from the courthouse, and then from the schoolhouse, and then from the houses of Congress and then, in His own churches I would substitute psychology for religion, and I would deify science, because that way men would become smart enough to create super weapons but not wise enough to control them.”
Harvey continues his essay by using the “S” word to emphasize the evil of mocking God and the redistribution of wealth.
“If I were Satan, I’d make the symbol of Easter an egg, and the symbol of Christmas, a bottle,” Harvey said. “If I were the devil, I would take from those who have and I would give to those who wanted, until I had killed the incentive of the ambitious.
“And then, my police state would force everybody back to work,” Harvey wrote. “Then, I could separate families, putting children in uniform, women in coal mines, and objectors in slave camps.
“In other words, if I were Satan, I’d just keep on doing what he’s doing,” Harvey concludes.
According to an article in Time magazine following his death on Feb. 28, 2009 at age 90, Harvey was behind the microphone for 75 years.