THE DEMOCRATS MUST CHOOSE
of Manhattan reported recently that of 150 witnesses summoned before the grand jury in the television quiz scandals, 100 lied despite their oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing...
...We have it within our grasp to do it, for no society in all history commands resources so abundant that almost no decision lies beyond our capacity to translate it into reality—if we have the will and the vision to do it...
...They will have to choose between the Acheson-Truman commitment to the cold war and the Stevenson-Bowles-Kennedy dedication to a more creative American foreign policy...
...It will be a long, uphill struggle...
...But the Democrats will have to choose...
...They will have to choose between the straddling "me too" mentality of a Lyndon Johnson and the bold liberalism of a Hubert Humphrey...
...Adlai Stevenson posed the problem in these words: "If we cannot—by a certain discipline, by readiness for reflection and quiet, by determination to do the difficult and aim at lasting good— rediscover the real purpose and direction of our existence, we shall not be free...
...There is no political patent medicine that will cure our social and economic aches and pains...
...No society in history has needed more urgently to draw on the deepest source of courage and vision and responsibility than our own...
...But most of all, the Democrats must, even if it means swimming against the stream, present a new and hopeful concept of our national purpose—one which would enable us to shake off our smugness and rise to the challenge we face...
...The single great imponderable is whether the national mood will merge with the national responsibility...
...And between a chaotic, selfish, indifferent, commercial society and the iron discipline of the Communist world, I would not like to predict the outcome...
...of Manhattan reported recently that of 150 witnesses summoned before the grand jury in the television quiz scandals, 100 lied despite their oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth...
...But Goethe, who experienced a crisis of freedom much like ours, said to his generation: "What you have inherited from your fathers, earn over again for yourselves or it will not be yours...
...We assume our moral superiority over the rest of the world...
...We coast on the assumption that the economic and technological superiority we enjoyed in the past will go on undisturbed if we just keep doing things as we always have...
...What can we do about it...
...There are no simple solutions or pat formulas...
...For all the grumbling over the shortage of consumer goods, and there is much of that, there is, in the Soviet Union, a unity of purpose, a dedicated spirit, a sense of self-sacrifice, and a relentless thrust forward that staggers the imagination and disturbs the spirit of the Western traveler...
...We have always had it, or at least the white Americans have always had it, and we like to think it will always be there...
...We are sluggish, apathetic, undisciplined, smug, and defensive...
...Our potential capabilities are limitless...
...Here, in our judgment, are some of the ingredients of a program that might enable the Democratic Party to provide the nation with the image of a dynamic, affirmative force bent on replacing the listless, complacent, and self-indulgent way of life that masquerades as "peace and prosperity" under the Eisenhower-Nixon Administration...
...There is, in fact, nothing we cannot buy except time...
...This sickness of spirit—what Senator Mike Mansfield called the "Roman decadence of the Fifties"—contrasts sharply with the dynamic drive that characterizes life in the country that is our great ideological adversary and confronts us with unprecedented challenge...
...This sounds pretty harsh, but it is high time we were blasted away from our television sets—if we are to meet the great challenge with which the Soviets confront us...
...It will not be quick or easy...
...But no wave of moral indignation swept the country...
...Our greatest need today is an awareness of the challenge we face, and with that awareness, the need to develop a discipline, within freedom, that will enable us to assume the social responsibilities that that challenge demands...
...We tend to take too much for granted...
...Outer tyranny with purpose may well triumph over the inner, purposeless tyranny of a confused and aimless way of life...
...The fault," as Cassius observed to Brutus, "is not in our stars but in ourselves...
...And Adlai Stevenson warned us recently that we tend to confuse the free with the free and easy...
...There are things that need doing immediately—the building of more schools with federal aid, the improvement of civil rights for our second-class citizens, the development of a national health program, the liberalization of social security, the launching of a truly adequate housing program, the inauguration of a wide-ranging expansion of our conservation program, and, perhaps most important of all, the promulgation of a creative American foreign policy rooted in a genuine willingness to embark on give-and-take negotiations of all issues, a commitment to move forward as rapidly as possible on the Soviet proposal for complete disarmament, and a determination to lend a helping hand, generously and without strings, to the underdeveloped nations of the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America...
...But most disturbing of all, we take our freedom for granted...
...The Soviets are dynamic, buoyant, hopeful, disciplined, and expansionist...
...The United States is rich in resources and people and skills...
...People were too busy building that second garage or buying a new color television set...
...The wealth of our annual product is twice that of our Soviet adversary...
Vol. 24 • February 1960 • No. 2
