[Grovenet] Hosstyle view of World History in a nutshell

[Ed Davie]

What is a liberal?

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Sen. John F. Kennedy, acceptance of the New York 
Liberal Party Nomination, September 14, 1960.
What do our opponents mean when they apply to us 
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 us 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 us 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 us 
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 us 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 
us 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 us 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.