HARTFORD NATIONAL BANK AND TRUST COMPANY
Established 1792
HARTFORD 15, CONNECTICUT
Dear Burke Viewer:
The following is a verbatim transcript of Dr. Albert E. Burke's "CHALLENGE" program for Wednesday, April 18, 1962, titled "DYNAMICS OF DEMOCRACY, PART I".
On your screen - conflict, between two words - which separate two worlds. The words are ''you" and ''they''. For Lucy Andreevna and her Soviet friends there - entertaining visiting American college students last summer - the word is "they". In today's USSR - as in practically all of yesterday's Russia - "they" are the small group of men and women in that country who hold the political power, and the right to use it. For Joe Smith and his friends there Americans - the word is "you". "You" are the individual with the political power and the responsibility to use it.
This difference between the words ''you" and "they" is no play on words. It took exactly 2,547 years to make possible the way of life those young Americans there - and you - enjoy now. It took that long to get political power out of the hands of the few into your hands, as an individual responsibility. Today's conflict between those two words, one at the heart of the dynamics of democracy - the other at the heart of the dynamics of communism - is an effort to put an end to a unique, and powerful idea in the world. How to block that effort: on tonight's "CHALLENGE" about the first in the series -''Dynamics of Democracy".
The time? January 27th, 1837. The place? Springfield, Illinois. Abe Lincoln, talk-ing to a young men's group about "perpetuating our political institutions" asks" "At what point shall we expect the approach of danger to our way of life? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth in their military chest - with Napolean for a commander - could not by force take a drink from our Ohio River, or make a track on our Blue Ridge mountains in a war of a thousand years.
At what point then, shall the approach of danger (to your way of life) be expected? I answer" Mr. Lincoln said, "if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us: it can-not come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a Nation of free men, we must Live through all time, or die by national suicide". Unquote.
Mr. Lincoln went on to tell his listeners that January day about 125 years ago, that there was no obligation greater for all Americans than the obligation to pass on to young Americans the knowledge of faith and belief in and love for our way of life that earlier Americans had known. His main point in that speech was that no danger was as great to our future as a free people than Americans who did not know what we are: how we became what we are and what our individual responsibilities are to make it possible for us to continue to be what we are.
The adult American who failed in this obligation to the young: the young, without know-ledge, without faith, without belief or love for the nation - both were the danger that would spring up amongst us - were the greatest danger to our future. Such Americans could not defend our way of life - could not live it.
As this was pointed up quite clearly 123 years later - in three things that happened last year: Two young men, 17 and 18 years old, were sentenced to death in a teenage gang-land killing of two 16-year olds. Several others who had been in on this affair were sent to prison for periods as long as 26 years. This newspaper clipping which tells
about the incident says that those teenagers who were sentenced to die showed no emotion. The group as a whole had shown no concern while being held for trial.
It is a fact that incidents like this explain why you spent over 22 billion.,dollars last year to deal with the problem of men and women in the nation who do not respect our institu-tions or our laws: to protect these United States from its enemies who have been spring-ing up in greater and greater numbers amongst us. That 22 billion dollars is roughly half as much as we spent last year to defend ourselves from our enemies outside the nation.
On more than one occasion I've made it a point to be in the police station - or the courthouse - where our so-called juvenile delinquents are booked or tried for one or another crime: and several times have talked with them, to get to know what moves them from law abiders to law breakers. I have here a list of questions I asked one particular group of 3 youngsters two years ago when the Quemoy and Matsu Islands were about to explode as an issue touching on the possibility of war. One of these questions was - What did they think their government ought to do about Formosa if, the Chinese communists invaded the place? If you could have seen the look in their faces -which said about as plainly as plain could be - What kind of creep is that one? One of the boys thought Formosa was the name of a hockey player. None of them knew where the government was - had never heard of Washington, D.C. I asked other questions -simpler ones, touching on the politics - the economics - the problems they would one day have the right to vote about.
Their answers made clear what this report we discussed in one of these sessions sev-eral months ago made clear - this book called "In Every War But One , about the record of the American prisoner of war in Korea back in the early 1950's. Among those young people there was an almost complete absence of any real meaningful ideals, values or religious convictions. They weren't being motivated to respect their country, their parents - or much of anything else. For reasons that have to do with what adult Americans like these were doing, and saying back in May of last year - a few months before those two teenagers were sentenced to die in a court of the same city. What these men were doing at an advertising conference called by one of the major networks was -making very clear that the obligation Mr. Lincoln had described about 125 years ago as the most important for every American, that is: to pass on knowledge of - faith and belief in - and love for this country, that obligation was not a saleable idea in 1960. Knowledge of anything involves some thought, and as this headline makes plain - our leading agency men in the field of television fear "thought" shows will imperil entertainment. If television wants to get serious about things, it can't count on sponsors - it says here. Why? Well. It would be wrong to make sponsors pay for such public service programming, which will do more to enhance the station than the sponsor's product. It would be wrong, too - as one of these men put it - to "knuckle under" to the pressure of the minority of viewers who want such programs. After all, the ratings prove the majority of television viewers don't favor such programs - unquote.
How great do you suppose the distance is between this kind of thinking by those adult Americans, and those young ones who were given those death sentences a few months later - young ones who knew little, and respected little about these United States? How great is the distance from here - from not getting serious about things - to that 22 billion dollars a year we now spend every year on the serious problem of defending ourselves from ourselves, as in crime prevention? How great is the distance from here to Joe Smith - fumbling for the answers, the dynamics of his democracy, while he was over in the USSR last summer, answers he has to have to defend his way of life - which, somehow just doesn't get through those entertaining shootouts on the main streets of never-never land, between the saloon and the jailhouse?
How great is the distance from this kind of America, to the kind these few - no major-ity of early Americans here - the kind of America these few worked out to make your way of life possible this minute? Did the majority of the people in their day favor their minority pressure to seriously consider and sponsor what was then - as it is now - a most remarkable way of life? Did the ideas of these men, about the equality of all free men before their God, come from the words of a Christ who was favored by the majority of the people of His day. Were the ideas of a Socrates in ancient Greece - ideas now a part of our political ideas about democracy - were they favored by a majority of Greeks then?
Socrates was put to death by the majority. Christ was crucified by the majority. The founding fathers were branded traitors by the ruling majority - and would have been hung, if they'd lost their revolution. In their time, there was a difference between mobocracy and democracy, proof of which is there, for any American to see, in the guarantees early Americans wrote into the blueprint for our way of life to protect the rights and interests of minorities - of individuals - against majority.
It not only distorts American history, and our kind of democracy to cater to this kind of majority rule - but seriously perverts the meaning and purpose of patriotism, which was Abe Lincoln was talking about that January day in 1837, when he described every American's greatest individual obligation to the nation's young: and through them the nation's welfare. It is something less than patriotic to honor the buck more than the national welfare today.
The point is, this weakens the dynamics of democracy. The nation's advertisers are by no means alone in it. In this article these men made clear "they" - that is, somebody else - should do the job of giving the public the information and knowledge it needs if there is to be a free future for the nation. Just as the woman who sent in this letter, and this book, not long ago feels that "they" that is, somebody else - should do some-thing about another matter which we will get to in a moment.
Most of you have probably never been in, or heard of, Brady, Texas. If you had been in Boston, Massachusetts, one day during the summer of 1861 - you would have heard a great deal about it - because on that day a line crew, out of St. Joseph, Missouri, stringing the nation's first telegraph line across the southwest, reached a military post just outside Brady - and history was made: Texas could now talk to the rest of the nation directly - and to celebrate the occasion, it talked as far as it could - by wire - to Boston.
One of the men who reported that event that day, was a newspaper editor who lived near-by in Concord, Massachusetts - where he had a friend named Thoreau: Henry David Thoreau. Stirred up by this latest Accomplishment of science, that newspaper editor dropped by Thoreau's place to inform him about what had happened. "Just think" he said to his friend, "Now we can talk to Texas. Isn't that wonderful?" "Yep", Thoreau replied. "What do you want to say to Texas?"
Thoreau was recognized then to be one of America's wittiest and most brilliant writers. His remark struck his editor friend as very funny. "What do you want to say to Texas?" He laughed and off he went to his home.
Thoreau want being funny. What he asked was one of the nation's biggest problems this minute. Then, a marvelous new way to communicate with people was given this nation: the telegraph; and Thoreau simply asked, What are you going to do with it? It was as marvelous in its day as television is now, in ours. But, the same question applies. "What do you want to do with it?" What do you want to say to Texas, or anyplace - or anybody else?" In itself, the telegraph, a printing press, a typewriter, radio, television or any other communication gadget is neither good nor bad. What's done with it is good or bad. Thoreau's question still fits. What do you want to say: what do you want to communicate to people?
That was pretty much what this woman was upset about when she sent me this letter with this book a short time ago. Is this the kind of stuff, her letter asks, any American can want to communicate to anyone - especially our young people? I can't show you this stuff. Regulation! But this mother took it away from her 12 year old son. It's the kind of pornographic tripe you can buy in quite a few neighborhood stores these days: girlie paperbacks. There ought to be a law to prevent this sort of thing, this woman writes. "They" - that is, someone else - ought to do something about it. No one is safe with this kind of stuff around. Can't you do something? she asks in this letter.
Yes. I can assure you that the law hasn't been passed yet - nor will it be - that can stop printing presses communicating this stuff. As a matter of fact, there are more laws on the books today dealing with this tripe than there were 40 years ago. But 40 years ago, things like this weren't peddled in most of the places that now carry them - not because the law prevented it, but because people wouldn't stand for it. It offended the moral
and ethical standards of the community, and you can't pass a law to make anybody moral or ethical. And it is a matter of morals and ethics - the kind that are at the heart of the dynamics of democracy: not this kind which considers whatever works with the major-ity to be good: but the kind of morals and ethics that came out of the 2,547 years of history that made this woman, and you, the individual with the political power - and the respon-sibility to use it - to deal with problems like this pornographic tripe.
That history of individual responsibility begins on a day back in the year 586, B. C. in Judah - where Jeremiah, the prophet, watches an unbelievable event taking place - which is to have, for that day, unbelievable results. The event was the destruction of the Temple of God by the Chaldeans. They came pouring into Jerusalem to punish the Jews for revolting against the rule of Nebuchadnezzar. Tearing apart the Lord's place was part of the punishment. It was unbelievable. How could mere man destroy the Lord's place? Jeremiah asked. But - there was the proof. At which point, Jeremiah took the first step into your life right now. He questioned a belief the majority of the people of his day favored. He dissented from that majority rule, went against it --- to do the only thing that has spelled progress through the whole of human history. God, he said, does not just live in temples of wood and stone; he lives in the hearts of men. Each man is his own individual temple -- and has his own responsibility to God. As history points out, there were people around in his day who didn't see that as a saleable idea either.
But it sold, as did the ideas of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man out of the New Testament: and the Greek idea of the political individual - and a steady clear progression through time right into the Declaration of Independence - and Constitution: blueprints for a way of life geared to what earlier Americans saw as eternal ends. Hamilton, Jefferson, Franklin, Livingstone described them as eternal ends - as a blueprint for what people would do, and what they would say to each other, in print - in words - or on the screen.
What this woman did in sending me this letter, to do something about this problem - is no more in line with that blueprint than these views of these men that no sponsor should be expected to back the kind of serious "thought" shows that would touch such problems. According to that blueprint, Mrs. X, you have the political power to peaceably assemble with your neighbors, in your community - and then petition for the redress of this grievance. It says so right here, in the Constitution, Article I of the Bill of Rights.
Not a very spectacular answer to your problems, is it? But it's the guts of the dynamics of democracy.
Democracy is no more, no less, dynamic than you are in making it work, at home first - then a little farther out. A little, because most of us find it much easier to try to save the whole world, than to try to pass a town ordinance to space cesspools properly in our own block. It's easier to be concerned about a national water problem by join-ing a national women's organization, than it is to join your neighbors at a town or ward or council meeting to keep the creek running through the local park clean. Educational problems are never so easy as they are when deciding what resolutions to pass at a White House conference off in Washington and never so hard as when deciding what to do about taxes for more science equipment or classroom space in the school just down the block. It's always easier to share responsibility with a group, than carry it alone.
But carrying it alone, right in your own home and community is where the dynamics of democracy gets its strength. Because it was at home, in the American farming family yesterday that our kind of political democracy took shape. Read Thomas Jefferson on this. But yesterday's American farming family isn't around anymore - not even on what's left of our farms. Where the family once worked together as an economic unit to make its own food, most of its clothing, tools and most of the rest of its needs - today, factories do all this. Where the family once held together because it worked together, there is no such tie today: but there is the same need today to see the family the same basic, healthy unit it has to be if the dynamics of democracy are to keep us the free people in a free future we want to be.
This can be done. Not easily, but the price of what you have - freedom - has never come easily. Whether the problem is getting this stuff out of your community, or whittling down the 22 billion dollars a year we put out to control what Mr. Hoover called the nation's "inner blight" last year, and what Mr. Lincoln warned about 125 years ago could be the destruction springing up amongst us - the place you begin to tackle this is at home. Freedom is hard work, and it's the power of example to the young. Your example first, in the home, and community. What do you respect? In what do you have faith? What do you believe? That is what you do say to your young ones first, then by means of printing presses, television and the rest, what you make it possible for others to say to them. Your power of example is the future for this nation. "They" - that is, somebody else - can't save it for you. That's part of the price of freedom. Abraham Lincoln's first obligation for all Americans remains the first obligation for all Americans, as we will follow this by getting into want we are; how we became what we are, and what we must do to continue the story of a free people next week, in Part II of the Dynamics of Democracy.