Rosenfeld Susan. Encyclopedia of American Historical Documents

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freedom of speech and press for material which does not

treat sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest . . .

Source:

Supreme Court Reporter, Vol. 77, pp. 1,304–1,324.

John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 1961

Address delivered by John F. Kennedy January 20, 1961, at his

inauguration as the 35th president of the United States. Speak-

ing to and for a new generation of Americans, Kennedy

pledged loyalty to old allies, support for new ones, and an

“alliance for progress” with Latin America. He offered to

America’s adversaries a new request for peace and coopera-

tion, for arms control and inspection. In the most quoted line

of this speech, Kennedy challenged all Americans to join in a

struggle against tyranny, poverty, disease, and war: “Ask not

what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for

your country.”

One lasting legacy of Kennedy’s New Frontier that cap-

tured the idealism inherent in his inaugural address was the

Peace Corps. He began it by executive order and announced

it in a message to Congress March 1, 1961, and Congress

established it as a permanent agency within the State Depart-

ment, September 22, 1961. At first, it consisted of mostly

young volunteers who went to developing nations to work for

social and economic progress. They taught in primary and sec-

ondary schools, constructed development projects, demon-

strated modern methods of sanitation, instructed farmers in

modern agricultural techniques, and performed other tasks.

The host countries had to invite them. Later, older adults,

including the mother of future president Jimmy Carter, also

became Peace Corps Volunteers. After the fall of the Soviet

Union, a number of formerly communist Eastern European

nations also became host countries.

President Kennedy was assassinated November 22, 1963,

in Dallas, Texas, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson be-

came president. Lee Harvey Oswald was soon arrested as the

assassin; he, in turn, was killed by Dallas bar owner Jack

Ruby. President Johnson quickly appointed a seven-member

commission, chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren, to investi-

gate both murders. Its findings were published September 27,

1964. After evaluating thousands of reports from federal and

local sources, and questioning hundreds of witnesses, the

commission concluded that Oswald had acted alone and that

there was no prior connection between Oswald and Ruby.

Many critics have attacked the commission’s procedures and

conclusions, arguing that a conspiracy, either foreign or

domestic, was responsible for the assassinations. Since the

Warren Report’s publication, a great deal of information relat-

ing to the assassination has been released that was not known

to the public and perhaps not known to the commissioners

and staff. This information included assassination attempts

sponsored by the CIA on Fidel Castro (Oswald had Cuban and

Soviet connections) and suggestions by organized crime fig-

ures that the Kennedy brothers should be killed. (Brother

Attorney General Robert Kennedy was assassinated by Sirhan

Sirhan in 1968.) While many Americans cannot accept that

Oswald acted alone, no credible evidence of a wider con-

spiracy leading to Kennedy’s death has surfaced, despite con-

gressional and independent investigations, including

examination of the bullets from Oswald’s rifle by forensic sci-

entists using modern methods. Congress appointed an Assas-

sination Records Review Board pursuant to a 1992 act. The

documents it collected are in the National Archives and

Records Administration and almost all are available to the

public.

________________________

_______________________

Mr. Chief Justice, President Eisenhower, Vice President

Nixon, President Truman, reverend clergy, fellow citizens,

we observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of

freedom—symbolizing an end, as well as a beginning—sig-

nifying renewal, as well as change. For I have sworn before

you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears

prescribed nearly a century and three quarters ago.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his

mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human

poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same rev-

olutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at

issue around the globe—the belief that the rights of man

come not from the generosity of the state, but from the

hand of God.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that

first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and

place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been

passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this

century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter

peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to

witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights

to which this Nation has always been committed, and to

which we are committed today at home and around the

world.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill,

that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any

hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to

assure the survival and the success of liberty.

This much we pledge—and more.

To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins

we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United,

there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ven-

tures. Divided, there is little we can do—for we dare not

meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.

To those new States whom we welcome to the ranks

of the free, we pledge our words that one form of colonial

1552 ERA 9: Postwar United States

control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced

by a far greater iron tyranny. We shall not always expect

to find them supporting our view. But we shall always

hope to find them strongly supporting their own free-

dom—and to remember that, in the past, those who fool-

ishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended

up inside.

To those peoples in the huts and villages across the

globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we

pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for

whatever period is required—not because the Commu-

nists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but

because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many

who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a

special pledge—to convert our good words into good

deeds, in a new alliance for progress, to assist free men and

free governments in casting off the chains of poverty. But

this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of

hostile powers. Let all our neighbors know that we shall

join with them to oppose aggression or subversion any-

where in the Americas. And let every other power know

that this hemisphere intends to remain the master of its

own house.

To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United

Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instru-

ments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace,

we renew our pledge of support—to prevent it from

becoming merely a forum for invective—to strengthen its

shield of the new and the weak—and to enlarge the area in

which its writ may run.

Finally, to those nations who would make themselves

our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that

both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark

powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all

humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.

We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only

when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be cer-

tain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.

But neither can two great and powerful groups of

nations take comfort from our present course—both sides

overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly

alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both

racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays

the hand to mankind’s final war.

So let us begin anew—remembering on both sides

that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always

subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let

us never fear to negotiate.

Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead

of laboring those problems which divide us.

Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious

and precise proposals for the inspection and control of

arms—and bring the absolute power to destroy other

nations under the absolute control of all nations.

Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science

instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, con-

quer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths,

and encourage the arts and commerce.

Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth

the command of Isaiah—to “undo the heavy burdens and

to let the oppressed go free.”

And if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the

jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new

endeavor, not a new balance of power, but a new world of

law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the

peace preserved.

All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor

will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of

this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on

this planet. But let us begin.

In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than in mine,

will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this

country was founded, each generation of Americans has

been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty.

The graves of young Americans who answered the call to

service surround the globe.

Now the trumpet summons us again—not as a call to

bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle,

though embattled we are; but a call to bear the burden of

a long twilight struggle, year in, and year out, “rejoicing in

hope, patient in tribulation”—a struggle against the com-

mon enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war

itself.

Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global

alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure

a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that

historic effort?

In the long history of the world, only a few generations

have been granted the role of defending freedom in its

hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this respon-

sibility—I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would

exchange places with any other people or any other gener-

ation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring

to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve

it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your coun-

try can do for you: Ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world: Ask not What Amer-

ica will do for you, but what together we can do for the

freedom of man.

Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citi-

zens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of

strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good

conscience our only sure reward, with history the final

judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love,

Domestic Policies after World War II 1553

asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on

earth God’s work must truly be our own.

Source:

Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States, 1789–

1965. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1965.

John F. Kennedy, Freedom Riders, 1961

Statement issued by President John F. Kennedy on May 20,

1961, after angry whites in Montgomery, Alabama, attacked a

busload of black and white “Freedom Riders” who were

attempting to test segregation barriers in interstate buses and

terminals.

Theoretically,

Brown v. Board,

bolstered by additional

court decisions, should have outlawed separate “colored” and

white facilities serving interstate commerce. However, Jim

Crow continued throughout the South. The Freedom Riders,

under the auspices of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE),

traveled as far as Anniston, Alabama, meeting mostly dirty

looks and fist fights with local toughs hanging out in a South

Carolina station. At Anniston, an organized mob met the bus

and set it on fire. The occupants were beaten with tire irons

and pipes as they emerged coughing from the smoke. Finally,

state troopers arrived and broke up the mob. More violence

greeted them in Birmingham. A second interracial group con-

tinued the Freedom Ride.

Until that point, the Kennedy administration had been

reluctant to interfere with desegregation efforts because it

needed the support of southern congressmen to pass legisla-

tion that it considered necessary. Forced by the publicity the

violence against the Freedom Riders had received, President

Kennedy sent an emissary, John Siegenthaler, Attorney General

(AG) Robert Kennedy’s administrative assistant, to speak to

Alabama governor John Patterson, who promised that the rid-

ers would be safe. His troopers escorted the bus to just outside

Montgomery, where their jurisdiction ended. The promised

protection from Montgomery police promptly disappeared,

leaving this group to a mob that seriously injured the riders

and Siegenthaler, who was helping one of them.

In 1961 there were only two ways that the federal gov-

ernment could interfere in situations where local law pre-

vailed: As a last resort the president could call out federal

troops or federalize the national guard, as President Eisen-

hower did in Little Rock in 1957. Before that becomes neces-

sary, the Attorney General on the president’s orders, can call

on the U.S. Marshal Service. Shortly after the president’s an-

nouncement, Attorney General Kennedy announced that he

was sending over 350 U.S. marshals to Montgomery.

In October 1962, the Kennedy administration once again

felt forced to call upon federal marshals, and eventually U.S.

troops, to quell a riot at the University of Mississippi in Oxford

when African-American James Meredith registered. Some

3,000 anti-integration forces armed with pipes, bricks, Molo-

tov cocktails, and guns virtually overwhelmed the town; the

Mississippi Highway Patrol refused to stop them. The 500 mar-

shals on scene could not prevent violence, and the troops did

not arrive for almost seven hours. In the end, two bystanders

were killed, and approximately 160 people were injured.

Meredith, guarded the entire year, was able to graduate.

________________________

_______________________

May 20, 1961

The Situation which has developed in Alabama is a source

of the deepest concern to me as it must be to the vast

majority of the citizens of Alabama and other Americans. I

have instructed the Justice Department to take all neces-

sary steps based on their investigations and information. I

call upon the Governor and other responsible State offi-

cials in Alabama as well as the Mayors of Birmingham and

Montgomery to exercise their lawful authority to prevent

any further outbreaks of violence. I would also hope that

any persons, whether a citizen of Alabama or a visitor

there, would refrain from any action which would in any

way tend to provoke further outbreaks. I hope that state

and local officials in Alabama will meet their responsibili-

ties. The United States Government intends to meet its.

Source:

Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F.

Kennedy, 1962. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Of-

fice, 1960–63. Also available on-line at http://www.jfklink.

com/speeches/jfk/publicpapers/1961/jfk198_61.html.

Port Huron Statement of the Students

for a Democratic Society, 1962

Manifesto of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS),

issued at the organization’s national convention in Port Huron,

Michigan, June 11–15, 1962. It condemned the American

establishment and proclaimed a revolution of social experi-

mentation beginning on university campuses. The Port Huron

Statement is considered the founding document of the so-

called New Left, as opposed to the communist, fellow-travel-

ing, and socialist “Old Left.” (The term “New Left” was a media

and academic construct. Its participants never embraced it.)

SDS had its roots in an “Old Left” organization, the

League for Industrial Democracy. Initially, its members worked

among the urban and rural poor, but by 1968 it became iden-

tified with direct, militant action. Its numbers burgeoned

nationwide, especially after the riots during the 1968 Demo-

cratic Convention in Chicago in which SDS leader and future

California state senator Tom Hayden was arrested under the

1554 ERA 9: Postwar United States

Anti-Riot Statute. This provision, part of the Civil Rights Act

of that year, was originally written to contain black “rabble-

rousers” like SNCC leader H. Rap Brown. However, it was

most famously used against the “Chicago Seven,” white radi-

cals, including Hayden, who were accused of fomenting the

convention disorders. The act prohibited interstate travel or

communication to participate in or incite a “riot.” The consti-

tutionality of the Anti-Riot Act was upheld in

United States v.

Dellinger

et al., the Chicago Seven conspiracy trial. (An eighth

person, Black Panther Bobby Seale, had his case severed from

the others.) Judge Julius Hoffman, in sentencing the five guilty

defendants (including Hayden), wrote, “we consider it unreal

. . . to suppose that the existence of this obtuse and obscure

provision will deter expression.” The Seventh U.S. Circuit

Court of Appeals, however, disagreed. In

United States v.

Dellinger

, issued November 21, 1972, it reversed the convic-

tions, finding that Judge Hoffman improperly prohibited the

defense from inquiring into the “background and attitudes” of

potential jurors during the jury selection process. According to

the appeal ruling, Judge Hoffman also made “a series of judi-

cial remarks deprecating defense counsel and the defense case

“that could have caused undue bias among jurors.”

The Anti-Riot Act still stands. However, protesters who

are arrested are more likely to be charged with local offenses

such as parading without a permit, disturbing the peace, or

vandalism, than the federal antiriot statute.

Eventually, SDS split, as some of its members espoused

terrorist actions such as use of explosives. The most militant

called themselves the Weatherman faction and succeeded not

only in planting explosives in federal buildings but several

blew themselves up in 1970 while making antipersonnel

bombs.

________________________

_______________________

(excerpt)

Introduction: Agenda for a Generation

We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest

comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfort-

ably to the world we inherit.

When we were kids the United States was the wealth-

iest and strongest country in the world: the only one with

the atom bomb, the least scarred by modern war, an initia-

tor of the United Nations that we thought would distribute

Western influence throughout the world. Freedom and

equality for each individual, government of, by, and for the

people—these American values we found good, principles

by which we could live as men. Many of us began matur-

ing in complacency.

As we grew, however, our comfort was penetrated by

events too troubling to dismiss. First, the permeating and

victimizing fact of human degradation, symbolized by the

Southern struggle against racial bigotry, compelled most of

us from silence to activism. Second, the enclosing fact of

the Cold War, symbolized by the presence of the Bomb,

brought awareness that we ourselves, and our friends, and

millions of abstract “others” we knew more directly

because of our common peril, might die at any time. We

might deliberately ignore, or avoid, or fail to feel all other

human problems, but not these two, for these were too

immediate and crushing in their impact, too challenging in

the demand that we as individuals take the responsibility

for encounter and resolution.

While these and other problems either directly

oppressed us or rankled our consciences and became our

own subjective concerns, we began to see complicated and

disturbing paradoxes in our surrounding America. The

declaration “all men are created equal . . . rang hollow

before the facts of Negro life in the South and the big cities

of the North. The proclaimed peaceful intentions of the

United States contradicted its economic and military

investments in the Cold War status quo.

We witnessed, and continue to witness, other para-

doxes. With nuclear energy whole cities can easily be pow-

ered, yet the dominant nation-states seem more likely to

unleash destruction greater than that incurred in all wars

of human history. Although our own technology is destroy-

ing old and creating new forms of social organization, men

still tolerate meaningless work and idleness. While two-

thirds of mankind suffers undernourishment, our own

upper classes revel amidst superfluous abundance.

Although world population is expected to double in forty

years, the nations still tolerate anarchy as a major principle

of international conduct and uncontrolled exploitation

governs the sapping of the earth’s physical resources.

Although mankind desperately needs revolutionary leader-

ship, America rests in national stalemate, its goals ambigu-

ous and tradition-bound instead of informed and clear, its

democratic system apathetic and manipulated rather than

“of, by, and for the people.”

Not only did tarnish appear on our image of American

virtue, not only did disillusion occur when the hypocrisy of

American ideals was discovered, but we began to sense

that what we had originally seen as the American Golden

Age was actually the decline of an era. The worldwide out-

break of revolution against colonialism and imperialism,

the entrenchment of totalitarian states, the menace of war,

overpopulation, international disorder, supertechnology—

these trends were testing the tenacity of our own commit-

ment to democracy and freedom and our abilities to

visualize their application to a world in upheaval.

Our work is guided by the sense that we may be the

last generation in the experiment with living. But we are a

minority—the vast majority of our people regard the tem-

porary equilibriums of our society and world as eternally-

functional parts. In this is perhaps the outstanding

Domestic Policies after World War II 1555

paradox: we ourselves are imbued with urgency, yet the

message of our society is that there is no viable alternative

to the present. Beneath the reassuring tones of the politi-

cians, beneath the common opinion that America will

“muddle through,” beneath the stagnation of those who

have closed their minds to the future, is the pervading feel-

ing that there simply are no alternatives, that our times

have witnessed the exhaustion not only of Utopias, but of

any new departures as well. Feeling the press of complex-

ity upon the emptiness of life, people are fearful of the

thought that at any moment things might thrust out of con-

trol. They fear change itself, since change might smash

whatever invisible framework seems to hold back chaos for

them now. For most Americans, all crusades are suspect,

threatening. The fact that each individual sees apathy in

his fellows perpetuates the common reluctance to organize

for change. The dominant institutions are complex enough

to blunt the minds of their potential critics, and en-

trenched enough to swiftly dissipate or entirely repel the

energies of protest and reform, thus limiting human

expectancies. Then, too, we are a materially improved soci-

ety, and by our own improvements we seem to have weak-

ened the case for further change.

Some would have us believe that Americans feel con-

tentment amidst prosperity—but might it not better be

called a glaze above deeply-felt anxieties about their role in

the new world? And if these anxieties produce a developed

indifference to human affairs, do they not as well produce

a yearning to believe there is an alternative to the present,

that something can be done to change circumstances in

the school, the workplaces, the bureaucracies, the govern-

ment? It is to this latter yearning, at once the spark and

engine of change, that we direct our present appeal. The

search for truly democratic alternatives to the present, and

a commitment to social experimentation with them, is a

worthy and fulfilling human enterprise, one which moves

us and, we hope, others today. On such a basis do we offer

this document of our convictions and analysis: as an effort

in understanding and changing the conditions of humanity

in the late twentieth century, an effort rooted in the

ancient, still unfulfilled conception of man attaining deter-

mining influence over his circumstances of life.

Source:

The Office of California senator Tom Hayden.

Barry Goldwater, “Extremism in the

Defense of Liberty,” 1964

Address delivered to the Republican National Convention by

Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona July 16, 1964, accepting

the party’s presidential nomination. Goldwater, an economic

conservative and staunch anticommunist, responded to accu-

sations that he was a right-wing extremist by declaring that

“extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” and “modera-

tion in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” He blamed the

Democratic Party for communist gains in Cuba, Europe, and

Southeast Asia, as well as for violence and corruption in the

United States. His uncompromising speech set the tone for his

campaign, in which Lyndon B. Johnson soundly defeated him.

However, some historians claim that while he lost the battle

Goldwater won the war. In 1968 he reentered the Senate

where he staunchly defended American involvement in Viet-

nam. Through his retirement in 1986 and after, Goldwater

became a respected voice as conservatism under Ronald Rea-

gan captured the American political mainstream.

________________________

_______________________

My good friend and great Republican, Dick Nixon and

your charming wife; Pat; my running mate—that wonder-

ful Republican who has served us so well for so long—Bill

Miller and his wife, Stephanie; to Thurston Morton, who’s

done such a commendable job in chairmaning this con-

vention; to Mr. Herbert Hoover who I hope is watching,

and to that great American and his wife, General and Mrs.

Eisenhower. To my own wife, fellow Republicans here

assembled, and Americans across this great nation:

From this moment, united and determined, we will go

forward together dedicated to the ultimate and undeniable

greatness of the whole man.

Together we will win.

I accept your nomination with a deep sense of humil-

ity. I accept, too, the responsibility that goes with it, and I

seek your continued help and your continued guidance.

My fellow Republicans, our cause is too great for any man

to feel worthy of it. Our task would be too great for any

man did he not have with him the heart and the hands of

this great Republican party.

And I promise you tonight that every fiber of my being

is consecrated to our cause, that nothing shall be lacking

from the struggle that can be brought to it by enthusiasm

by devotion and plain hard work.

In this world no person, no party can guarantee any-

thing, but what we can do and what we shall do is to

deserve victory and victory will be ours. The Good Lord

raised this mighty Republican—Republic to be a home for

the Brave and to flourish as the land of the free—not to

stagnate in the swampland of collectivism, not to cringe

before the bully of Communism.

Now my fellow Americans, the tide has been running

against freedom. Our people have followed false prophets.

We must, and we shall, return to proven ways—not

because they are old, but because they are true.

We must, and we shall, set the tide running again in

the cause of freedom. And this party, with its every action,

1556 ERA 9: Postwar United States

every word, every breath and every heart beat, has but a

single resolve, and that is freedom.

Freedom made orderly for this nation by our constitu-

tional government. Freedom under a government limited

by laws of nature and of nature’s God. Freedom balanced

so that order lacking liberty will not become the slavery of

the prison cell; balanced so that liberty lacking order will

not become the license of the mob and of the jungle.

Now, we Americans understand freedom, we have

earned it; we have lived for it, and we have died for it. This

nation and its people are freedom’s models in a searching

world. We can be freedom’s missionaries in a doubting

world.

But, ladies and gentlemen, first we must renew free-

dom’s mission in our own hearts and in our own homes.

During four futile years the Administration which we

shall replace has distorted and lost that faith. It has talked

and talked and talked and talked the words of freedom but

it has failed and failed and failed in the works of freedom.

Now failure cements the wall of shame in Berlin; fail-

ures blot the sands of shame at the Bay of Pigs; failures

marked the slow death of freedom in Laos; failures infest

the jungles of Vietnam, and failures haunt the houses of

our once great alliances and undermine the greatest bul-

wark ever erected by free nations, the NATO community.

Failures proclaim lost leadership, obscure purpose,

weakening wills and the risk of inciting our sworn enemies

to new aggressions and to new excesses.

And because of this Administration we are tonight a

world divided. We are a nation becalmed. We have lost

the brisk pace of diversity and the genius of individual cre-

ativity. We are plodding along at a pace set by centralized

planning, red tape, rules without responsibility and regi-

mentation without recourse.

Rather than useful jobs in our country, people have

been offered bureaucratic makework; rather than moral

leadership, they have been given bread and circuses; they

have been given spectacles, and, yes, they’ve even been

given scandals.

Tonight there is violence in our streets, corruption in

our highest offices, aimlessness among our youth, anxiety

among our elderly, and there’s a virtual despair among the

many who look beyond material success toward the inner

meaning of their lives. And where examples of morality

should be set, the opposite is seen. Small men seeking

great wealth or power have too often and too long turned

even the highest levels of public service into mere personal

opportunity.

Now, certainly simple honesty is not too much to

demand of men in government. We find it in most. Repub-

licans demand it from everyone.

They demand it from everyone no matter how exalted

or protected his position might be.

The growing menace in our country tonight, to per-

sonal safety, to life, to limb and property, in homes, in

churches, on the playgrounds and places of business, par-

ticularly in our great cities, is the mounting concern or

should be of every thoughtful citizen in the United States.

Security from domestic violence, no less than from foreign

aggression, is the most elementary and fundamental pur-

pose of any government, and a government that cannot

fulfill this purpose is one that cannot long command the

loyalty of its citizens.

History shows us, demonstrates that nothing, nothing

prepares the way for tyranny more than the failure of pub-

lic officials to keep the streets safe from bullies and

marauders.

Now we Republicans see all this as more—much

more—than the result of mere political differences, or

more political mistakes. We see this as a result of a funda-

mentally and absolutely wrong view of man, his nature and

his destiny.

Those who seek to live your lives for you, to take your

liberty in return for relieving you of yours; those who ele-

vate the state and downgrade the citizen, must see ulti-

mately a world in which earthly power can be substituted

for Divine Will. And this nation was founded upon the

rejection of that notion and upon the acceptance of God as

the author of freedom.

Now those who seek absolute power, even though

they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply

demanding the right to enforce their own version of

heaven on earth, and let me remind you they are the very

ones who always create the most hellish tyranny.

Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it

must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken

course stems from false notions, ladies and gentlemen, of

equality. Equality, rightly understood as our founding

fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emanci-

pation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it

has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to confor-

mity and then to despotism.

Fellow Republicans, it is the cause of Republicanism

to resist concentrations of power, private or public, which

enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism.

It is the cause of Republicanism to insure that power

remains in the hands of the people—and, so help us God,

that is exactly what a Republican President will do with the

help of a Republican Congress.

It is further the cause of Republicanism to restore a

clear understanding of the tyranny of man over man in the

world at large. It is our cause to dispel the foggy thinking

which avoids hard decisions in the delusion that a world of

conflict will somehow resolve itself into a world of har-

mony, if we just don’t rock the boat or irritate the forces of

aggression—and this is hogwash.

Domestic Policies after World War II 1557

It is, further, the cause of Republicanism to remind

ourselves, and the world, that only the strong can remain

free; that only the strong can keep the peace.

Now I needn’t remind you, or my fellow Americans

regardless of party, that Republicans have shouldered this

hard responsibility and marched in this cause before. It

was Republican leadership under Dwight Eisenhower that

kept the peace, and passed along to this Administration the

mightiest arsenal for defense the world has ever known.

And I needn’t remind you that it was the strength and

the believable will of the Eisenhower years that kept the

peace by using our strength, by using it in the Formosa

Strait, and in Lebanon, and by showing it courageously at

all times.

It was during those Republican years that the thrust of

Communist imperialism was blunted. It was during those

years of Republican leadership that this world moved

closer not to war but closer to peace than at any other time

in the last three decades.

And I needn’t remind you, but I will, that it’s been

during Democratic years that our strength to deter war has

been stilled and even gone into a planned decline. It has

been during Democratic years that we have weakly stum-

bled into conflicts, timidly refusing to draw our own lines

against aggression, deceitfully refusing to tell even our own

people of our full participation and tragically letting our

finest men die on battlefields unmarked by purpose,

unmarked by pride or the prospect of victory.

Yesterday it was Korea: tonight it is Vietnam. Make no

bones of this. Don’t try to sweep this under the rug. We are

at war in Vietnam. And yet the President, who is the Com-

mander in Chief of our forces, refuses to say, refuses to say

mind you, whether or not the objective over there is vic-

tory, and his Secretary of Defense continues to mislead

and misinform the American people, and enough of it has

gone by.

And I needn’t remind you, but I will, it has been dur-

ing Democratic years that a billion persons were cast into

Communist captivity and their fate cynically sealed.

Today—today in our beloved country we have an

Administration which seems eager to deal with Commu-

nism in every coin known—from gold to wheat; from con-

sulates to confidence, and even human freedom itself.

Now the Republican cause demands that we brand

communism as the principal disturber of peace in the

world today. Indeed, we should brand it as the only signif-

icant disturber of the peace. And we must make clear that

until its goals of conquest are absolutely renounced, and its

relations with all nations tempered, Communism and the

governments it now controls are enemies, of every man on

earth who is or wants to be free.

Now, we here in American can keep the peace only if

we remain vigilant, and only if we remain strong. Only if

we keep our eyes open and keep our guard up can we pre-

vent war.

And I want to make this abundantly clear—I don’t

intend to let peace or freedom be torn from our grasp

because of lack of strength, or lack of will—and that I

promise you Americans.

I believe that we must look beyond the defense of

freedom today to its extension tomorrow. I believe that

the Communism which boasts it will bury us will instead

give way to the forces of freedom. And I can see in the dis-

tant and yet recognizable future the outlines of a world

worthy of our dedication, our every risk, our every effort,

our every sacrifice along the way. Yes, a world that will

redeem the suffering of those who will be liberated from

tyranny.

I can see, and I suggest that all thoughtful men must

contemplate, the flowering of an Atlantic civilization, the

whole world of Europe reunified and free, trading openly

across its borders, communicating openly across the world.

This is a goal far, far more meaningful than a moon

shot.

It’s a truly inspiring goal for all free men to set for

themselves during the latter half of the twentieth century.

I can see and all free men must thrill to the events of this

Atlantic civilization joined by a straight ocean highway to

the United States. What a destiny! What a destiny can be

ours to stand as a great central pillar linking Europe, the

Americas and the venerable and vital peoples and cultures

of the Pacific.

I can see a day when all the Americans—North and

South—will be linked in a mighty system—a system in

which the errors and misunderstandings of the past will be

submerged one by one in a rising tide of prosperity and

interdependence.

We know that the misunderstandings of centuries are

not to be wiped away in a day or wiped away in an hour.

But we pledge, we pledge, that human sympathy—what

our neighbors to the South call an attitude of sympatico—

no less than enlightened self-interest will be our guide.

And I can see this Atlantic civilization galvanizing and

guiding emergent nations everywhere. Now I know this

freedom is not the fruit of every soil. I know that our own

freedom was achieved through centuries of unremitting

efforts by brave and wise men. And I know that the road to

freedom is a long and a challenging road, and I know also

that some men may walk away from it, that some men

resist challenge, accepting the false security of govern-

mental paternalism.

And I pledge that the America I envision in the years

ahead will extend its hand in help in teaching and in culti-

vation so that all new nations will be at least encouraged to

go our way; so that they will not wander down the dark

alleys of tyranny or to the dead-end streets of collectivism.

1558 ERA 9: Postwar United States

My fellow Republicans, we do no man a service

by hiding freedom’s light under a bushel of mistaken

humility.

I seek an America proud of its past, proud of its ways,

proud of its dreams and determined actively to proclaim

them. But our examples to the world must, like charity,

begin at home.

In our vision of a good and decent future, free and

peaceful, there must be room, room for the liberation of

the energy and the talent of the individual, otherwise our

vision is blind at the outset.

We must assure a society here which while never

abandoning the needy, or forsaking the helpless, nurtures

incentives and opportunity for the creative and the pro-

ductive.

We must know the whole good is the product of many

single contributions. And I cherish the day when our chil-

dren once again will restore as heroes the sort of men and

women who, unafraid, and undaunted, pursue the truth,

strive to cure disease, subdue and make fruitful our natu-

ral environment, and produce the inventive engines of

production, science and technology.

This nation, whose creative people have enhanced this

entire span of history, should again thrive upon the great-

ness of all those things which we—we as individual citi-

zens—can and should do.

During Republican years, this again will be a nation of

men and women, of families proud of their role, jealous of

their responsibilities, unlimited in their aspirations—a

nation where all who can will be self-reliant.

We Republicans see in our constitutional form of gov-

ernment the great framework which assures the orderly

but dynamic fulfillment of the whole man, and we see the

whole man as the great reason for instituting orderly gov-

ernment in the first place.

We see in private property and in economy based

upon and fostering private property the one way to make

government a durable ally of the whole man rather than

his determined enemy.

We see in the sanctity of private property the only

durable foundation for constitutional government in a free

society.

And beyond that we see and cherish diversity of ways,

diversity of thoughts, of motives, and accomplishments.

We don’t seek to live anyone’s life for him. We only seek to

secure his rights, guarantee him opportunity, guarantee

him opportunity to strive with government performing

only those needed and constitutionally sanctioned tasks

which cannot otherwise be performed.

We, Republicans, seek a government that attends to

its inherent responsibilities of maintaining a stable mone-

tary and fiscal climate, encouraging a free and competitive

economy and enforcing law and order.

Thus do we seek inventiveness, diversity and creative

difference within a stable order, for we Republicans define

government’s role where needed at many, many levels,

preferably through the one closest to the people involved:

our towns and our cities, then our counties, then our

states, then our regional contacts and only then the

national government.

That, let me remind you, is the land of liberty built by

decentralized power. On it also we must have balance

between the branches of government at every level.

Balance, diversity, creative difference—these are the

elements of Republican equation. Republicans agree,

Republicans agree heartily, to disagree on many, many of

their applications. But we have never disagreed on the

basic fundamental issues of why you and I are Republi-

cans.

This is a party—this Republican party is a party for

free men. Not for blind followers and not for conformists.

Back in 1858 Abraham Lincoln said this of the Repub-

lican party, and I quote him because he probably could

have said it during the last week or so: It was composed of

strained, discordant, and even hostile elements.

Yet all of these elements agreed on one paramount

objective: to arrest the progress of slavery, and place it in

the course of ultimate extinction.

Today, as then, but more urgently and more broadly

than then, the task of preserving and enlarging freedom at

home and of safeguarding it from the forces of tyranny

abroad is great enough to challenge all our resources and

to require all our strength.

Anyone who joins us in all sincerity we welcome.

Those, those who do not care for our cause, we don’t

expect to enter our ranks in any case. And let our Repub-

licanism so focused and so dedicated not be made fuzzy

and futile by unthinking and stupid labels.

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of

liberty is no vice!

And let me remind you also that moderation in the

pursuit of justice is no virtue!

By the—the beauty of the very system we Republicans

are pledged to restore and revitalize, the beauty of this

Federal system of ours is in its reconciliation of diversity

with unity. We must not see malice in honest differences of

opinion, and no matter how great, so long as they are not

inconsistent with the pledges we have given to each other

in and through our Constitution.

Our Republican cause is not to level out the world or

make its people conform in computer-regimented same-

ness. Our Republican cause is to free our people and light

the way for liberty throughout the world. Ours is a very

human cause for very humane goals. This party, its good

people, and its unquestionable devotion to freedom will

not fulfill the purposes of this campaign which we launch

Domestic Policies after World War II 1559

here now until our cause has won the day, inspired the

world, and shown the way to a tomorrow worthy of all our

yesteryears.

I repeat, I accept your nomination with humbleness,

with pride and you and I are going to fight for the good-

ness of our land. Thank you.

Source:

Landmark Documents in American History, Facts On File, Inc.

Lyndon B. Johnson,

“Great Society” Speech, 1965

Speech given by President Lyndon B. Johnson on May 22,

1965, at the University of Michigan commencement. In his

address, Johnson enhanced his war on poverty by proposing a

plan to build a “Great Society” in the United States—one

which elevated the quality of individual lives and advanced

American civilization. To achieve his goal, Johnson declared

that the entire urban United States must be rebuilt; pollution,

overcrowding, and the disappearance of forests and fields cur-

tailed; every child must have access to adequate schooling;

and education must offer a viable escape from poverty. The

president noted that such changes required what he termed “a

creative federalism” between the government and local com-

munity leaders.

Previously, Congress, on August 20, 1964, put teeth into

Johnson’s war on poverty by enacting the Economic Oppor-

tunity Act, which established the Office of Economic Oppor-

tunity (OEO) and authorized funding for a variety of

programs. The funds established the Job Corps, to provide

training for youths aged 16 to 21; a work-study program to

aid low-income students; on-the-job training for youths;

urban and rural community-action programs designed to

ensure “maximum feasible participation” by the poor; adult

education programs; the VISTA (Volunteers in Service to

America) program of volunteer social service workers and

teachers for the disadvantaged; Head Start, to aid poor

preschool children; and assistance for migrant workers and

their families.

Improving educational opportunities was a major part of

Johnson’s vision. On April 11, 1965, he signed the Elementary

and Secondary Education Act, which provided $1.3 billion in

federal aid to schools with large numbers of children from

low-income families. The funds helped both private and pub-

lic schools, and public agencies controlled expenditures.

Although the law stated that no direct federal aid would go to

church-related institutions, needy children enrolled in their

schools could receive “on loan” textbooks and other instruc-

tional materials that would remain the property of the public

schools. The act also provided funds for supplemental educa-

tion centers, services, and research; and strengthened state

education departments.

________________________

_______________________

President Hatcher, Governor Romney, Senators McNa-

mara and Hart, Congressmen Meader and Staebler, and

other members of the fine Michigan delegation, members

of the graduating class, my fellow Americans:

It is a great pleasure to be here today. This university

has been coeducational since 1870, but I do not believe it

was on the basis of your accomplishments that a Detroit

high school girl said, “In choosing a college, you first have

to decide whether you want a coeducational school or an

educational school.”

Well, we can find both here at Michigan, although

perhaps at different hours.

I came out here today very anxious to meet the Michi-

gan student whose father told a friend of mine that his

son’s education had been a real value. It stopped his

mother from bragging about him.

I have come today from the turmoil of your Capital to

the tranquillity of your campus to speak about the future

of your country.

The purpose of protecting the life of our Nation and

preserving the liberty of our citizens is to pursue the hap-

piness of our people. Our success in that pursuit is the test

of our success as a Nation.

For a century we labored to settle and to subdue a

continent. For half a century we called upon unbounded

invention and untiring industry to create an order of plenty

for all of our people.

The challenge of the next half century is whether we

have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate

our national life, and to advance the quality of our Ameri-

can civilization.

Your imagination, your initiative, and your indignation

will determine whether we build a society where progress

is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values

and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in

your time we have the opportunity to move not only

toward the rich society and the powerful society, but

upward to the Great Society.

The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for

all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to

which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just

the beginning.

The Great Society is a place where every child can

find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his tal-

ents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to

build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and rest-

lessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not

only the needs of the body and the demands of com-

1560 ERA 9: Postwar United States

merce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for com-

munity.

It is a place where man can renew contact with nature.

It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for

what is adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place

where men are more concerned with the quality of their

goals than the quantity of their goods.

But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor,

a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a

challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a des-

tiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous

products of our labor.

So I want to talk to you today about three places where

we begin to build the Great Society—in our cities, in our

countryside, and in our classrooms.

Many of you will live to see the day, perhaps 50 years

from now, when there will be 400 million Americans—

four-fifths of them in urban areas. In the remainder of this

century urban population will double, city land will dou-

ble, and we will have to build homes, highways, and facili-

ties equal to all those built since this country was first

settled. So in the next 40 years we must re-build the entire

urban United States.

Aristotle said: “Men come together in cities in order to

live, but they remain together in order to live the good

life.” It is harder and harder to live the good life in Amer-

ican cities today.

The catalog of ills is long: there is the decay of the cen-

ters and the despoiling of the suburbs. There is not enough

housing for our people or transportation for our traffic.

Open land is vanishing and old landmarks are violated.

Worst of all expansion is eroding the precious and

time honored values of community with neighbors and

communion with nature. The loss of these values breeds

loneliness and boredom and indifference.

Our society will never be great until our cities are

great. Today the frontier of imagination and innovation is

inside those cities and not beyond their borders.

New experiments are already going on. It will be the

task of your generation to make the American city a place

where future generations will come, not only to live but to

live the good life.

I understand that if I stayed here tonight I would see

that Michigan students are really doing their best to live

the good life.

This is the place where the Peace Corps was started.

It is inspiring to see how all of you, while you are in this

country, are trying so hard to live at the level of the people.

A second place where we begin to build the Great

Society is in our countryside. We have always prided our-

selves on being not only America the strong and America

the free, but America the beautiful. Today that beauty is in

danger. The water we drink, the food we eat, the very air

that we breathe, are threatened with pollution. Our parks

are overcrowded, our seashores overburdened. Green

fields and dense forests are disappearing.

A few years ago we were greatly concerned about the

“Ugly American.” Today we must act to prevent an ugly

America.

For once the battle is lost, once our natural splendor

is destroyed, it can never be recaptured. And once man

can no longer walk with beauty or wonder at nature his

spirit will wither and his sustenance be wasted.

A third place to build the Great Society is in the class-

rooms of America. There your children’s lives will be

shaped. Our society will not be great until every young

mind is set free to scan the farthest reaches of thought and

imagination. We are still far from that goal.

Today, 8 million adult Americans, more than the

entire population of Michigan, have not finished 5 years of

school. Nearly 20 million have not finished 8 years of

school. Nearly 54 million—more than one-quarter of all

America—have not even finished high school.

Each year more than 100,000 high school graduates,

with proved ability, do not enter college because they can-

not afford it. And if we cannot educate today’s youth, what

will we do in 1970 when elementary school enrollment will

be 5 million greater than 1960? And high school enroll-

ment will rise by 5 million. College enrollment will

increase by more than 3 million.

In many places, classrooms are overcrowded and cur-

ricula are outdated. Most of our qualified teachers are

underpaid, and many of our paid teachers are unqualified.

So we must give every child a place to sit and a teacher to

learn from. Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and

learning must offer an escape from poverty.

But more classrooms and more teachers are not

enough. We must seek an educational system which grows

in excellence as it grows in size. This means better training

for our teachers. It means preparing youth to enjoy their

hours of leisure as well as their hours of labor. It means

exploring new techniques of teaching, to find new ways to

stimulate the love of learning and the capacity for creation.

These are three of the central issues of the Great Soci-

ety. While our Government has many programs directed at

those issues, I do not pretend that we have the full answer

to those problems.

But I do promise this: We are going to assemble the

best thought and the broadest knowledge from all over the

world to find those answers for America. I intend to estab-

lish working groups to prepare a series of White House

conferences and meetings—on the cities, on natural

beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging

challenges. And from these meetings and from this inspi-

Domestic Policies after World War II 1561