June 3, 1970
Page 17997
ADDRESS BY SENATOR MUSKIE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
Mr. SYMINGTON. Mr. President, recently the distinguished Senator from Maine (Mr. MUSKIE) delivered a thought-provoking address at the University of Kansas, in Lawrence.
The Senator closed this address with the following comment:
The crucial ingredient in a democracy is the identification, the instinctual trust that flows in thousands of minute and invisible currents through a society. It is this that makes a man feel that he belongs, that allows him to live at ease with his fellows without having to be watchful, competitive and tough.
I ask unanimous consent that this support address be inserted at this point in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the address was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
SENATOR EDMUND S. MUSKIE AT UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS, LAWRENCE, KANS., MAY 5, 1970
I have come here today, not to foment violence or rebellion, but to incite political action.
I have come, not to lecture you on the disruption of college campuses, but to encourage you to pursue your convictions.
And I have come, not to offer excuses for what has been done in the past and what is being done now, but to work out with you a new basis for American politics so that we will no longer need excuses.
There was a time when students like yourselves would have been satisfied by symbolic moral expression. Winning or losing on an issue seemed less important than the symbolic outburst.
Now, this is not enough.
Moral action expressed in practical political terms, in winning votes, is the thing that counts.
This is what we should talk about and this is what we should do.
In so doing, we must address ourselves to the young, the dissatisfied, the despairing and to the powerful, the leaders, the men who make the rules: the battle for men's minds will be won with words, not stones and the quest for a whole society will be achieved only with love and understanding, not bayonets and bullets.
More than a century ago, there was bitter division among the citizens of this State. The question then was one between freedom and slavery. And the ensuing violence impressed the name "Bleeding Kansas" on our history.
Once again, there is division among us. The question today is between tolerance and intolerance, at all levels. And violence threatens to brand us anew in the harshest of terms.
James Russell Lowell stated a very simple truth some years ago which became terribly poignant early this week.
He said, "If youth be a defect, it is one that we outgrow only too soon."
Lowell was not speaking about youth on a campus as opposed to youth on a battlefield. He was not distinguishing between the young student and the young worker or farmer. He was not drawing a line between young people who agreed with him and young people who disagreed with him.
Instead, Lowell was telling us that all young people share a passion for life which should not be ridiculed . . . and a dedication to action which should not be maligned.
He was telling us of young people like Allison Krause . . a young girl of 19 who, her teachers said, was "more concerned about people than causes" . . . a young girl who was herself studying to be a teacher, and who opposed the war . . . a young girl who was shot to death on Monday in the spring of her freshman year.
Disparaging political remarks have been made all too frequently in recent months about young people, especially those of college age.
The consequences of this mean rhetoric are terrible and clear. A sullen mood of alienation has settled on our campuses. And a bitter feeling of resentment has been nurtured against our students. How lamentable then, for anyone to accept as inevitable the nine wounded and four dead at Kent State University.
That is why it is incumbent on those who lead in political life, who preside over our universities, who direct our industries, to call us together rather than order us apart.
That is why it is incumbent on all of us to speak out about our convictions rather than abide in silence – to raise our sights rather than lower our profiles.
It is urgent that we prove to all Americans, young and old, how they can move us to deliberate seriously and to act responsibly.
We cannot remake the history of recent years: a war which has distorted all our lives for at least 5 years, and which threatens to continue doing so;
A spectre of racism which has bolted our doors and emptied our streets, while spreading suspicion and fear.
But we can decide – right now, all of us – to restore to our lives and to the leadership of this nation the qualities of tolerance and dignity which have been too long ignored.
And we must decide that there are no second-class young Americans ... whether at home or abroad . . .at school or in a distant jungle. And it is up to the majority of Americans too long silent . . . the majority which cares about young America ... to let them know it.
It is little wonder to me that young people today are more concerned with the freedom to escape, than with the freedom to become involved . . . that they are more conscious of the liberty to oppose, than of the liberty to support ... that they are more familiar with the right to despair, than with the right to rejoice.
We forget too often that it has been the passion and the action of young people which has made us begin coming to grips with the fundamental problems that confront us all ... an end to war and a beginning of peace ... an end to prejudice and a beginning of mutual respect ... an end to pollution and a beginning of a more livable world.
I submit that we cannot afford to forget the gathering of so many young people last autumn, impoloring us to disengage from Vietnam ... or the teach-ins across the country last month, petitioning us to save our environment ... or the brotherhood of students at Yale last weekend, urging us to overcome the hostility between white and black.
If we forget these manifestations of young America, it is at a risk to our very existence as a vital, creative and free society. For I believe that the vast majority of our young people are simply asking that we have the decency to listen to them, and the understanding to respond in an intelligent manner.
I believe further that our young people are not the only Americans who have been shocked in the last two weeks. They are not alone in their plea to make sense out of confusion, to right our wrongs, to convert our grief into that greatness of spirit and purpose which has been the American ideal.
Millions of Americans have been shaken, are confused, and are looking for some answers – for something to do and ways to do it. We must not let these questions go unanswered. We must not let these people down.
For the dangers to academic freedom and personal freedom in this land approach from two directions ... from those who use their temporary sanctuaries of elective office to insult and intimidate the members of academic communities ... and from those who use these same academic communities as verbal and physical battlefields to further their own ambitions for personal power and notoriety.
Vindictiveness and violence, no matter what cause they allegedly serve, are unacceptable and vicious codes of conduct. The intemperate public official and the intolerant young fanatic do not merit our esteem or support. They do not affirm life, they deny it. They do not kindle liberty, they extinguish it. They do not purify an ideal, they corrupt it.
Those who express instant and false indictments of students, faculty members and administrators must be repudiated in clear and frank language, and the repudiation plainly reported. And those who turn to the deliberate destruction of property as a way of achieving their goals, must be held responsible for their acts.
We must not let our passion turn to hatred, or our action stoop to violence. I suggest, instead, that the problems of our times require from us the exercise of a good deal more discipline, responsibility and plain sense than our detractors would have us exhibit, and that our frenzied advocates would have us possess.
"Perseverance," as Plutarch expressed it long ago, "is more prevailing than violence, and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little."
Change . . . necessary and beneficial change ... can come from reasoned insistence and reasoned debate. The sudden turn to violent alternatives has come about, not because reason has failed, but because it requires a courage we seem to have misplaced ... the courage to talk sense ... the courage to refrain from senseless rage ... the courage to preserve domestic tranquility without fixed bayonets or live ammunition.
Clearly, we do not lack for frontiers to engage our best energies. We are trying new life styles.
We are defining new realities. But the dangers of vindictiveness and violence will remain, so long as our national conscience and our personal values are subjected to a "new uncertainty" of purpose.
I urge that we exhibit a "new spirit" . . . a spirit without arrogance, and without destructive impulse ... a spirit of courage that counsels. "Do not do to others that which you would not have them do to you."
This means that we try out diplomacy before sending troops ... that we call people neighbors, and not pigs or bums . . . that we dignify and sanctify life and not treat it lightly.
Without that spirit ... with flagging enthusiasm ... we shall only grow more distrustful of our institutions, and lose all confidence in ourselves.
The vital question then becomes, not whether governments, universities, corporations should change ... but rather how they should change.
New and welcome directions are already emerging ... as students achieve effective representation in matters which affect their student lives ... as university trustees express public concern at meetings of publicly-held corporations ... as college communities improve their relationships with the larger communities of which they are a part.
Universities in particular can and should be catalysts for invigorating change in our body politic.
The teach-ins during Earth Week, for example, educated not only the immediate participants, but also the many persons who read about and listen to these discussions and debates.
But such efforts are not enough. We have not yet learned the lessons of violence. We have not yet realized that killing will not heal a divided nation.
We must do more, not promise less. We must move, through hard work, toward a whole society, not, through intolerance, to a war against ourselves which we cannot win.
It seems too obvious to say that our institutions, in particular our universities, function in an atmosphere free from oppression by militant radicals and armed guards. Freedom of expression, uninhibited by threats of violence, is vital to the life of any community.
Yet increasingly, our alternatives are narrowed. In the fact of mistrust, intolerance and despair, we are told that we must choose – between more violence and more despair, between revolution and repression.
I am not ready to accept that choice, and I do not believe you are ready to accept that choice.
I do not believe most Americans are ready to accept that kind of a future for our country.
If we accept such a choice, we have given up tolerance – and we have admitted defeat in mending a broken society.
I think there is another way – a way that will work. A way in which every concerned American can help in healing the wounds of a divided America.
Bear in mind ... there will be elections on November 3, in every State and in every Congressional district. There should be candidates, throughout this country, who are ready to listen and willing to act, in the pursuit of peace.
We have six months to convince Americans who believe in peace – at home and in Indochina – to join us. We have six months to talk and listen and persuade.
We have six months to put together a People to People Campaign to give America national leadership committed to peace and the problems of our people – leadership which will end the war in Indochina; and the costly and endless arms race; encourage reform of our democratic institutions to make them more responsive to the people; and give priority to problems which demand our attention.
We have six months to assemble a coalition of concerned Americans, from all segments of society, to press for these policies. Congress can remake these policies, but we must remake the Congress.
We have never focused on this electoral challenge before as we must focus on it now. We can do it, but we cannot do it alone. We need dearly the help of every American who is tired of war, who is sick of bitterness and hatred, and who despairs of intolerance and violence.
We need the help of every American who has faith in peace and tolerance, who is willing to talk to his fellow man, and who thinks there is a better road to peace than war and a better way for a nation to live than for its people to die.
You will recall that the preamble to our Constitution was as humble as it was eloquent ... that it sought to offer not paradise, but a "more perfect Union."
The opportunity is still available to us, to form a more perfect Union . . . to shape a whole society. It is not, however, an opportunity easy to grasp.
A more perfect Union requires strict fidelity, by the Government and by the people, to the constitutional rights of free, open and non-violent expression. A whole society requires the healthy exercise of those American instincts of fairness, compassion, understanding and cooperation which transcend differences in age, in geography, in political persuasion.
This is a very fleeting time. People are ready to help and to work, but you must ask for their help.
You must show them that you want what they want – what we all want. And that you want their help.
More people are ready to listen than ever before. We must not waste this chance. We must not let them down.
It has been said: "The crucial ingredient in a democracy is the identification, the instinctual trust that flows in thousands of minute and invisible currents through a society. It is this that makes a man feel that he belongs, that allows him to live at ease with his fellows without having to be watchful, competitive and tough."