Where have all the flowers gone?
- Just when you thought you could escape from the crumbling cities and move to the country— not.
- Johnson's second topic is the environment. American the Beautiful is in serious danger of becoming "The Ugly America."
- Johnson makes a pun on the title of the 1958 novel The Ugly American, which was about the failure of U.S. diplomacy.
- Anyway, it's getting to the point we won't even be able to breathe clean air or drink unpolluted water.
- Overcrowding, open land plowed under and paved over, forests disappearing— people are losing touch with nature.
- Once we destroy the natural environment, we can't get it back again.
- The spirit of Americans, which depends on the natural world, will wither like those house plants you forgot to water.
- This speech is becoming a real downer, kids.
- But again, that's Johnson's point. We, the people, made these problems, so we, the people, can fix them.