Is there a true American psyche, a distinctively American spirit shared by all or most of our people despite our diverse, melting pot ethnicity? The way Americans rallied to deliver North when he was interrogated on television indicates yes; our inner consciousness responded, and cheered for Ollie.
Another happening, or should we say non-happening, also illustrates the American psyche and how it manifests itself loud and clear despite powerful attempts to make us conform otherwise. The American people have emphatically and collectively said NO to the metric system, a decision which is finally being admitted by those who wanted otherwise.
The Metric Conversion Act was passed by Congress in the high tide of the assumption that government could direct our lives and solve all our problems (even those government-created). Signed by President Gerald Ford in 1975, this presumptuous law authorized the liberal do-gooders and bureaucrats, who think they know what’s best for us ordinary folk, to banish all our existing measures and sizes and amounts, and “go international” with a new system.
This decision was made by a little handful of self-appointed elite, without any public demand, or even discussion or debate.
Metric was promoted by the educators who are forever wanting to impose globalism on public school curriculum and by some of the Fortune 500 businesses that trade in foreign markets. Most press comment simply assumed metric’s superiority and inevitability.
The first act of the metric meddlers was to change highway signs from miles to kilometers. When American drivers encountered these confusing and alien signs, they accelerated into action. Faced with overwhelming public opposition, the government had to abandon this plan in 1977.
Shell Oil (a foreign-owned metric enthusiast) refitted pumps in about 10,000 stations at an estimated cost of up to $2 million in order to force customers to buy gasoline by the liter instead of the gallon. Shell had to give up this expensive effort to make us adopt European ways when Shell customers began to switch their business to other service stations that sold gasoline by the familiar gallon.
The busybodies tried to force cookbook authors to use metric, then tried to compromise by putting metric conversion tables at the back of each book. Now, Harper & Row and other publishers have even dropped the conversion tables. The metric advocates sigh in sadness, but the rest of us sigh with relief.
Some businesses in the export or import business adopted metric, which, of course, they have the freedom to do. But it should not be their option to force metric on the big majority of small businesses that trade only in America and for whom the change would be very expensive. Cost estimates range up to $100 billion, and of course they would be passed along to consumers.
There isn’t any evidence that metric would be better or more rational even if we didn’t suffer any changeover costs. For example, the number of degrees between freezing and boiling in Fahrenheit (32 to 212) is a more exact measurement system than the Celsius scale (1 to 100).
The pro-metric propaganda in the 1970s was overwhelming and intimidating. Metric’s inevitability seemed so certain. To oppose metric in those years made one seem like a nut or something, or at least a neanderthal, out of sync in this progressive age.
One of the few anti-metric articles that ever appeared in those early years was written by Chicago columnist Bob Greene. He invited his readers to “join” a no-dues organization called “WAM,” standing for “We Ain’t Metric.”
Speaking to a convention of pro-metric bureaucrats in 1978, Greene boldly told the 1,000 delegates, “There is not going to be any metric system because the American people don’t want it. It’s as simple as that. … Pounds, inches, miles, yards are good, patriotic American words that have served us well for 200 years, and we’re not about to get rid of them.”
It’s downright silly, not to speak of the immense changeover costs, to try to force 240 million Americans to give up our existing measurements. We feel comfortable measuring our weight in pounds, our height in inches, our travel in miles, our gasoline in gallons, our land in acres, our coal in tons, our oil in barrels, our wheat in bushels, our temperature in degrees, our football fields in yards, our milk in quarts, and our recipes in cups and teaspoons.
And for what purpose should we abandon the tried-and-true and substitute metric? To make us conform to the way foreigners do business — people who don’t have a fraction of the freedom and good life that we enjoy.
The metric diehards complain that the United States and Burma are the only two countries in the world that haven’t either adopted metric or required its future adoption. The average American greets that argument with a big “So what!” The silent majority, functioning without leaders or activists, has spoken, and the Reagan Administration wisely abolished the Metric Board.
