June 1, 1965
PAGE 12205
Address by Senator Muskie
EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. CLAIR CALLAN OF NEBRASKA IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Tuesday, June 1, 1965
Mr. CALLAN. Mr. Speaker, on May 22, 1965, the Nebraska Democratic Party held its annual Jefferson-Jackson Day banquet in the State Capitol, Lincoln, Nebr. In every respect this gathering was a success. The highlight of the evening was an inspiring speech by the banquet speaker, Senator EDMUND S. MUSKIE, of the State of Maine. Senator MUSKIE gave to those in attendance his clear-cut answer to the question, "What is the Great Society? -- What Does it Mean?" I believe his speech is so important and relevant to our day that I would like to commend it to my colleagues in Congress, and therefore include it with my remarks in the RECORD:
REMARKS BY SENATOR EDMUND S. MUSKIE AT LINCOLN, NEBRASKA
MAY 22, 1965
Governor and Mrs. Morrison, Lieutenant Governor and Mrs. Sorensen, Congressman and Mrs. Callan, and Cornhuskers, this is my first visit to Nebraska, and I am delighted to be here. I like what I have seen, and I like what I have heard in the few hours I have been here.
Although this is my first visit, Nebraska was not unknown to me before I came. I had heard that Nebraska has a football team. And I knew about Willie Greenlaw, of Portland, Maine, who used to play on that team. The fiction of Willa Cather had made Nebraska a vivid land for people in the remotest corners of our country.
William Jennings Bryan and George Norris are beacons of dedication, courage, and leadership to all Americans. And your new leaders are adding distinction to Nebraska's name.
Governor Morrison, impressive to me because he is an effective Governor in dealing with the difficult problems which I know Governors face, is achieving a nationwide reputation -- in part because of what he is doing for Nebraska, a story you know better than I -- but, even more important, because of what he is, because of the things for which he stands, and because of the qualities of leadership he brings to American public life.
We would be proud to have him in the U.S. Senate.
Lt. Gov. Phil Sorensen is the envy of those of us who are past the half-century mark because he is already running fast at an age when we had not yet reached the starting line. He is clearly a young man of ability and talent who knows how to get things done and who will go far.
Congressman CLAIR CALLAN is a distinguished freshman Congressman who is already making an impact and getting results in Washington for Nebraska and Nebraska farmers. That isn't easy for a freshman to do. I know, because my freshman years are not too far behind me.
He takes his place beside the majority leader of the Senate, a distinguished Senate committee chairman, a former Attorney General of the United States, a powerful House committee chairman, in saving veterans hospitals which had been scheduled to close in their States. I am going to make an appointment with him next week to learn how he does it. I am impressed, as I know you are, by these leaders and their high promise for Nebraska and our country.
It is my task tonight to speak to you of victory of the Democratic Party, of the Great Society, and of what they mean to America. It is customary to do so, on an occasion such as this, with some fire and brimstone directed at the opposition. I will disappoint those who expect that touch. I have been courting Republicans so long that I find it difficult to speak harshly of them. More importantly, there is constructive work to be done.
What is the Great Society? What does it mean?
It was the dream of Jefferson and those others who wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence in the exciting and perilous days of 1775.
It was the goal of the Constitution makers of 1787.
It is what Americans have worked and struggled and fought for ever since.
It is nothing more and nothing less than the belief that our country will achieve fulfillment in the fulfillment of each of her citizens.
In 1810, Jefferson phrased it this way: "The freedom and happiness of man are the sole objects of all legitimate government."
Washington's victory at Yorktown did not achieve these objects, but rather the freedom to pursue them. His victory did not win for his countrymen a system of government, but rather the freedom to choose one. And their first choice was a bad one. Having fought a war to escape the abuses of the King's government, they were afraid to create an effective one of their own.
The results were predictably bad, and almost disastrous for the cause of freedom. The world saw emerging on this continent, not a single, united country, but 13 small and quarrelsome ones -- erecting trade barriers against each other -- creating competing and worthless currencies -- ignoring national problems and national responsibilities at home and abroad.
Doubts arose on both sides of the Atlantic as to whether freemen could govern themselves. The veterans of Washington's armies begged him to make himself king.
When the forefathers gathered at Philadelphia, in 1787, they had one overriding responsibility: to find a way for freemen to consider their common problems, to form common judgments, and to make effective common decisions.
Some 30 years later, Jefferson, in the evening of his life, writing to a friend in England said: "We have demonstrated on this continent that a government so modeled as to rest continually upon the will of the whole society is a practicable government."
That has been the test and the measure of our national policies even since -- to find practicable ways to meet the problems and to overcome the obstacles on the road to the fulfillment of man. It is the test and the measure of the Great Society and the man who leads us toward it -- Lyndon Johnson.
And our system has worked. It has enabled us to preserve freedom and, at the same time, to deal effectively with our common problems.
Consider where we began and where we are. Three million people clustered in 13 weak colonies, huddled on the Atlantic seaboard, have become 190 million people, spanning the continent, who are the most powerful influence and force for good on the face of the globe.
To travel that distance we have moved successfully through a great Civil War which threatened to destroy us; we have filled and developed the vast open spaces of the West; we have met and mastered the industrial revolution in a way which is the supreme example of the world, friend and foe alike; we have absorbed millions upon millions of immigrants from overseas, who spoke with a variety of tongues, and so many of whom had no tradition in the practices of freedom; and we have dominated the victories and the aftermath of two World Wars.
There are those who say that we achieved the form and the purpose of our society in 1789. That was only the beginning of the long journey toward our goal. We must press on. We have been committed to our goal from the beginning of the Republic. But we have learned that the achievement of that goal has become more difficult, more complex, more frustrating -- yes, almost more impossible -- with every passing day.
We all know the problems. Here at home –
The growing pressures of population and what they are doing -- to our cities, to our highways, to our schools, to the air we breathe, to our water, and to our people.
The incredible impact of science and technology -- which lengthen life, shorten distances, and produce new and marvelous and even useless physical things almost faster than we can use them constructively.
The accelerating obsolescence and waste of these physical things -- but, even more importantly, of yesterday's ideas and answers to the accompanying problems of living together and working together.
The greed and the dishonesty, the crime and the corruption, the prejudice and the discrimination which threaten the deterioration and breakdown of decency and order, and of the civilizing qualities which prompt men to love and respect and help each other.
Around the world –
The prospects for the ultimate triumph of decency and the fulfillment of the nobler instincts of man are no less discouraging.
The drive and determination of peoples for better lives, above the level of ignorance and poverty and disease, are caught up and frustrated by ignoble men, ruthless systems of government, ancient prejudices and hatreds.
These problems and these obstacles -- here at home and in our world -- are the day-to-day work of our country. Are they more than we can manage? That depends upon how much we are willing to try.
At the very outset of my political life, I expressed some doubt, to an old friend, about the wisdom of my decision to subject myself to the burdens and the sacrifices, the slings and arrows, of a political career. The wise old man -- an ardent and lifelong Republican, I might add -- said to me: "MUSKIE, as long as you are in this world, you should be a part of it."
His own life was the best definition of what he meant. He did not have a political career, but, in every way, he was very much a part of his community and his State.
To a noteworthy and unusual degree, he seems to have cast his actions and thoughts, in his law practice and in his business affairs, in the context of his concept of the larger public interest.
He believed that man can improve -- both his purposes and his ability to achieve them.
He believed in the essential desire of man to do so and, in so doing, to advance the welfare of his fellow man.
He believed that, in order to do so, each of us must apply our intelligence, our creative force, our will, and our courage to the task.
He believed that each of us can be sustained by faith in each other, notwithstanding the human weaknesses and the shortcomings which accumulate so much evidence to undermine that faith.
These were not the innocent beliefs of a child, but the hardened convictions of a warmhearted, tough-minded old man who, for more than 90 years, lived constantly as a part of this world.
Unfortunately, there are many who do not share my old friend's attitude toward democratic government. There are the doubters -- the cynical citizens and the cynical leaders -- who generate apathy to public wrongs and resistance to change.
In many ways, they are the most dangerous enemies of the public interest. For wherever there is cynicism, there is distrust. Wherever there is distrust, there is fear, and wherever there is fear, faith in each other is endangered.
There are the cynical leaders. We all know them. Some of them entered public service as cynics, looking to public office as a means to wealth and power, and betrayal of the public trust is their daily practice.
Some of them have become cynics because of the wrongs they have suffered and the injustices they have seen committed. In them the light of public life has burned out. And there are the cynical citizens who, for good reasons or none, distrust politics and political leaders. They are like the soap manufacturer who advertised that his soap was so strong it could "wash the reputation of a politician clean."
They discourage public participation in the political process.
They encourage the destruction of confidence in law and in the men who make and administer the laws.
In extreme cases, we find them in open defiance of our institutions and of the rights of free people under our Constitution.
These cynics, citizens and leaders alike, are not justified -- by our national experience or by the story of man. But their numbers and their influence are growing.
My father came to this country at the turn of the century. He spent long hours telling me of what he left behind and what he found here.
I cannot understand how anyone who knows our national experience, who has studied the American story, who fully realizes the obstacles we have overcome, can but believe deeply that we have found the best way ever conceived for men to live and work together in order, justice, and peace.
Jefferson and his colleagues created the Great Society. My father came to it. I was born in it. You and I, as members of the only political party founded by men who also helped establish our system, understand the duty and the responsibility imposed upon each of us in that society. And we have a clear vision of the future and its promise when we finally achieve the fulfillment of man.