Larry Reed Reveals: One Undaunted Heart Can Make History
Posted by admin on February 9, 2012 · Leave a Comment
Reed Reveals: One Undaunted Heart Can Make History
February 4, Atlantis – Providing a welcome respite from the gravitas of election year politicking, Foundation for Economic Freedom President Larry Reed enthralled a Central Palm Beach County Republican Club crowd with Tales of Unsung Heroes at their most recent get-together. In a bid to re-emphasize the importance of character in the public arena and reinvigorate the value of virtue and high ideals in a jaundiced society, this globetrotting ambassador for freedom and individual enterprise lauded the lives of abolitionist champion Thomas Clarkson, prodigious hymn writer Fanny Crosby, and Holocaust children’s savior Nicholas Winston.
The first was a young man who won a prestigious British essay contest in 1784 on the inadmissibility and immorality of one human owning another. Not long after he decided to devote his life to the cessation of the slave trade, the abolition of slavery within the British Empire, and the improvement of the lot of the freed black man. The odds against him were stupendous. Yet starting with nothing, and then with a few Quakers, and then William Wilberforce, and indomitable courage, he prevailed over the course of a long life to achieve all three goals.
In stark contrast, American Fanny Crosby lived with a debilitating handicap for 95 years and yet viewed it as a blessing, going on to publish more than 9,000 hymns and volumes of poetry. This woman, who radiated sunshine despite being totally blind, personally knew every US President from John Quincy Adams to Woodrow Wilson, and most of them came to her home to pay homage. She was the first woman to address Congress and unabashedly praised her Christian faith as the pillar of her strength.
Reed’s last exemplar was his 102-year old friend Sir Nicholas Winton, who as a London stockbroker in 1938 happened to visit Prague, Czechoslovakia. At the insistence of a friend he toured the local refugee camps filled with Ostjuden, with parents pleading for a future for their kinder. Reacting with a vigorous letter and telegram campaign to scores of governments to accept Jewish children, with only Britain and Sweden replying positively, Winton managed by hook and by crook to smuggle 669 kids overseas to foster homes. With the Nazi menace all around him! Yet he hid this feat from his wife for 50 years before the BBC made it public in 1988. Winton claimed that anyone with a good heart would have done the same thing, but Queen Elizabeth didn’t exactly agree, knighting the humble Nicky Winton in 2002.