There is an American, still alive today, who saved lives.
Not one life, not two, not even ten. Not even thousands. Not even millions. This man has saved hundreds of millions of lives. This is a man who changed the world, who gave life and hope to uncounted multitudes.
You won't hear about him on Fox News. Or on CBS News. In fact (until now, of course) not even on Daily Kos.
Who is he? Below the fold.
We are talking, of course, about Dr. Norman E. Borlaug, architect of the Green Revolution.
Normally I'm no fan of Gregg Easterbrook, but he does have a point:
...Borlaug has saved more lives than anyone else who has ever lived...Through the 1940s and 1950s, Borlaug developed high-yield wheat strains, then patiently taught the new science of Green Revolution agriculture to poor farmers of Mexico and nations to its south. When famine struck India and Pakistan in the mid-1960s, Borlaug and a team of Mexican assistants raced to the Subcontinent and, often working within sight of artillery flashes from the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, sowed the first high-yield cereal crop in that region; in a decade, India's food production increased sevenfold, saving the Subcontinent from predicted Malthusian catastrophes...Every nation his green thumb touched has known dramatic food production increases plus falling fertility rates (as the transition from subsistence to high-tech farm production makes knowledge more important than brawn), higher girls' education rates (as girls and young women become seen as carriers of knowledge rather than water) and rising living standards for average people...
Borlaug has done more with his little finger than George W. Bush or Bill O'Reilly have in their entire worthless lives.
Yet Borlaug is unknown in the United States, and...television tonight ignored his receipt of the Congressional Gold Medal, America's highest civilian award...CBS Evening News did have time for video of a bicycle hitting a dog. (I am not making that up.)
The news we are spoon-fed is not the news that really matters. But an MSM hack knows how his class operates:
Borlaug's story is ignored because his is a story of righteousness -- shunning wealth and comfort, this magnificent man lived nearly all his life in impoverished nations. If he'd blown something up, lied under oath or been caught offering money for fun, ABC, CBS and NBC would have crowded the Capitol Rotunda today with cameras, hoping to record an embarrassing gaffe. Because instead Borlaug devoted his life to serving the poor, he is considered Not News.