What do our opponents mean when they
apply to U.S. the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as
they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies
abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with
the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members
demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a
"Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone
who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares
about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing,
their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil
liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate
and suspicions that grip U.S. in our policies abroad, if that is
what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a
"Liberal."
But first, I would like to say what I understand the word
"Liberal" to mean and explain in the process why I consider myself
to be a "Liberal," and what it means in the presidential election of
1960.
In short, having set forth my view -- I hope for all time -- two
nights ago in Houston, on the proper relationship between church and
state, I want to take the opportunity to set forth my views on the
proper relationship between the state and the citizen. This is my
political credo:
I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in
human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart
as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the
source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith
in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the
heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party
creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind
and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his
reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the
amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life
deserves.
I believe also in the United States of America, in the promise
that it contains and has contained throughout our history of
producing a society so abundant and creative and so free and
responsible that it cannot only fulfill the aspirations of its
citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon for all mankind. I do
not believe in a superstate. I see no magic in tax dollars which are
sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and
incompetence of large-scale federal bureaucracies in this
administration as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion
when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well. But
I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full
powers and full responsibilities. Government is an art and a
precious obligation; and when it has a job to do, I believe it
should do it. And this requires not only great ends but that we
propose concrete means of achieving them.
Our responsibility is not discharged by announcement of virtuous
ends. Our responsibility is to achieve these objectives with social
invention, with political skill, and executive vigor. I believe for
these reasons that liberalism is our best and only hope in the world
today. For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the
same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is
drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and
peacefully striving to meet them. Only liberalism, in short, can
repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and
liberate our national energies. And the only basic issue in the 1960
campaign is whether our government will fall in a conservative rut
and die there, or whether we will move ahead in the liberal spirit
of daring, of breaking new ground, of doing in our generation what
Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai
Stevenson did in their time of influence and responsibility.
Our liberalism has its roots in our diverse origins. Most of U.S.
are descended from that segment of the American population which was
once called an immigrant minority. Today, along with our children
and grandchildren, we do not feel minor. We feel proud of our
origins and we are not second to any group in our sense of national
purpose. For many years New York represented the new frontier to all
those who came from the ends of the earth to find new opportunity
and new freedom, generations of men and women who fled from the
despotism of the czars, the horrors of the Nazis, the tyranny of
hunger, who came here to the new frontier in the State of New York.
These men and women, a living cross section of American history,
indeed, a cross section of the entire world's history of pain and
hope, made of this city not only a new world of opportunity, but a
new world of the spirit as well.
Tonight we salute Governor and Senator Herbert Lehman as a symbol
of that spirit, and as a reminder that the fight for full
constitutional rights for all Americans is a fight that must be
carried on in 1961.
Many of these same immigrant families produced the pioneers and
builders of the American labor movement. They are the men who
sweated in our shops, who struggled to create a union, and who were
driven by longing for education for their children and for the
children's development. They went to night schools; they built their
own future, their union's future, and their country's future, brick
by brick, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, and now in
their children's time, suburb by suburb.
Tonight we salute George Meany as a symbol of that struggle and
as a reminder that the fight to eliminate poverty and human
exploitation is a fight that goes on in our day. But in 1960 the
cause of liberalism cannot content itself with carrying on the fight
for human justice and economic liberalism here at home. For here and
around the world the fear of war hangs over U.S. every morning and
every night. It lies, expressed or silent, in the minds of every
American. We cannot banish it by repeating that we are economically
first or that we are militarily first, for saying so doesn't make it
so. More will be needed than goodwill missions or talking back to
Soviet politicians or increasing the tempo of the arms race. More
will be needed than good intentions, for we know where that paving
leads.
In Winston Churchill's words, "We cannot escape our dangers by
recoiling from them. We dare not pretend such dangers do not exist."
And tonight we salute Adlai Stevenson as an eloquent spokesman
for the effort to achieve an intelligent foreign policy. Our
opponents would like the people to believe that in a time of danger
it would be hazardous to change the administration that has brought
U.S. to this time of danger. I think it would be hazardous not to
change. I think it would be hazardous to continue four more years of
stagnation and indifference here at home and abroad, of starving the
underpinnings of our national power, including not only our defense
but our image abroad as a friend.
This is an important election -- in many ways as important as any
this century -- and I think that the Democratic Party and the
Liberal Party here in New York, and those who believe in progress
all over the United States, should be associated with U.S. in this
great effort. The reason that Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt
and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson had influence abroad, and the
United States in their time had it, was because they moved this
country here at home, because they stood for something here in the
United States, for expanding the benefits of our society to our own
people, and the people around the world looked to U.S. as a symbol
of hope.
I think it is our task to re-create the same atmosphere in our
own time. Our national elections have often proved to be the turning
point in the course of our country. I am proposing that 1960 be
another turning point in the history of the great Republic.
Some pundits are saying it's 1928 all over again. I say it's 1932
all over again. I say this is the great opportunity that we will
have in our time to move our people and this country and the people
of the free world beyond the new frontiers of the 1960s.
