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" pro-gram for Wednesday, May 2, 1962, titled "DYNAMICS OF DEMOCRACY, PART III".
This is a very unusual fellow. He stamped his foot one day, out in Arizona - and created the Grand Canyon. With a scoop of his hand, he carved Puget Sound out of the state of Washington. There are lakes all over Wisconsin he put there. Rivers all over Pennsylvania, which he laid out. He's been a farmer - a lumberjack, and a big business tycoon at different times in his life - in different parts of America.
Just when he was born, no one really knows. Some say he fought in the Papineau Rebellion back in the early 1800's. He was with the Red River Lumber Company in Minnesota as recently as 1944. Between that rebellion and World War II he made a lot of history -opening the praries, settling the plains, crossing the mountains out west - to build this nation. He's a very unusual fellow - is Paul Bunyan there, American: with an unusual problem at the moment - unlike any he's faced before.
To face it, Paul Bunyan is about to take a trip. It is the most important trip in his life
- a very important trip for you and our future as a free people - as we will get into this in tonight's "CHALLENGE" - about part III - in the series "Dynamics of Democracy".
Paul Bunyan's destination - the Sandwich Islands: Hawaii to you. While they were still Sandwich Islands, back in 1852, a member of Congress from the new state of California urged the government to take over this place. They were stepping stones to Asia, he said. America's influence in Asia would one day depend on them.
History proved he was right almost 90 years later, when World War II began for us in these islands. Hawaii was the most important of the stepping stones to Asia - for military power then. Now, history is about to bear out that early California congressman again - as Hawaii becomes the most important of stepping stones to Asia for a different kind of American power. More than ever, our future depends upon how things go in Asia- how more than half the human race there goes in setting up new political and economic ways of doing things. And more than ever, American influence in Asia can depend on these islands - now our 50th state - because it is our 50th state and because the story of Paul Bunyan is about to move into it, to make it an important dynamic of democracy in today's kind of world.
The kind of world in which this place has been, for years, the most important of stepping stones into Asia for a Soviet Union - as we dealt with this several sessions back. As long ago as 1923, this place was described by Soviet leaders as an "advanced post for revolutionizing the east" - as a spearhead for the penetration of communism into Asia. For some 40 years, this place has been the Marxist showpiece in Asia. We've had nothing to match it. To this place young people have come from all parts of the world to be educated and trained in the political, . social and economic ways of doing things, com-munist. There for years, the USSR has compared its way of dealing with the non-Russian minorities who live there with the way of the empire powers in their colonies - and the way of the United States in Hawaii. Only under communism, visitors from a highly race-conscious Asia were told, can men know equal rights - and brotherhood. The colonies were kept as colonies by the empire powers - Hawaii is kept from becoming one of the United States - because non-whites are considered to be inferiors. Ina highly race conscious world, this argument was used very effectively against us - until March 1959 when we made Hawaii our 50th state and set up our own "advanced post for revolutionizing the east" our spearhead for the penetration of democratic ideas into Asia - as Paul Bunyan moves into it. And this is his problem: the kind he and the America he is have never faced before.
Paul's problem is how to explain himself to the world; how to use Hawaii as our answer to communism's message in Asia - in ways that will insure a place in the future for us as a free people. From communism's spearhead in Asia has come a blueprint for the future which leaves no room for Paul Bunyan - born the rugged individualist, grown up on private property where with individual initiative and private enterprise he earned his independence under capitalism and political democracy, in freedom. These are the words at the heart of what we've been - what we are - and what quite a few of us would Like to go on being. What can Paul do or say - what can you do or say - from Hawaii, or anyplace else to make room for that kind of person in the future?
Which was the question forty people - educators, business men and a few from government - met here on February 25, 1961 to work out. Here on the University of Hawaii campus, they gathered to decide how to tell the story of Paul Bunyan to Asia through a new school to be called the East-West Center. The official announcements about this new school don't mention Paul by name, but a main reason for bringing students here from Asia (and from Africa and South America, too) is to tell his story: to explain what the rugged individual was in our history: what private property has meant in our way of setting up the good life; and how individual initiative and private enterprise played their parts under what we mean by capitalism and political democracy, to make us a free and independent people. That is the story of Paul Bunyan. It is the story of American democracy. It will be explained in the hope - in an effort - to give the peoples of Asia and the rest of the world a different blueprint for their future' and ours than has come out of a Soviet Union and a communist China so far pretty much without competition.
The East-West Center is our first really serious effort to set up that competition where it counts - and for the 375 students who will be signed in by July let - the story of Paul Bunyan can be a powerful story - made particularly powerful by where it's told. With 3/4's of its population non-white, mainly Asian or of Asian descent, Hawaii was chosen as the location for the Center so that race conscious Asians and Africans could see our version of equal rights and brotherhood, in operation - as an answer to the powerful communist claim that only under communism are these things possible for all men. The different races rubbing elbows in our newest state have never gotten along better. There have been none of the racial battlegrounds there which have made so many headlines, and done so much to damage the prestige of the United States around the world, from other parts of the nation the past few years. While Hawaii is not typical of the attitude of all Americans in this business of man's humanity to man - and the world's non-white people know it - Hawaii is an entirely honest picture of what is possible under our political system when it's allowed to work.
Just as the story of Paul Bunyan is an entirely honest picture of what we have been, and still are as a people, to pass on to those students in the East-West Center. That story as one of our most important weapons with which to fight for a non-communist future for the world - after a quick break.
The story of Paul Bunyan starts here, perhaps as much as 25,000 years ago, with a sheet of ice 1000 feet thick over the New England part of these United States. You won't find Paul Bunyan - The American story - rooted here, in your history books. But the story of Paul Bunyan, born the rugged individualist, with his unusual ideas about freedom and democracy and capitalism, and the rest - the American story is in very important part, the story of this ice, and rain, and trees and rocks - combined with some ideas that come ashore in New England one day in the early 1600's at Plymouth Rock.
Taken together, they add up to the statement by an early American named Jefferson, that our way of life was one of the products that came off what he describes as the individual family farm of his time. In the writings of Thomas Jefferson, he states pretty clearly his belief that our kind of political democracy - our ideas about individual initiative, private enterprise - our kind of capitalist economy - our kind of freedom all have roots that go back to that kind of farm, which was mainly in New England.
These words, at the heart of what we've been - what we are - and what quite a few of us would like to go on being - have deeper roots than just that kind of farm. Those, roots go hack to the ice, rain, trees, and rocks which are the takeoff point for any real under-standing of Paul Bunyan - and the American story. An important point to remember as we begin the vitally important job of explaining ourselves to the rest of the world, in places like that East-West Center out in Hawaii. What we have to tell is a unique story.
Let's look into that point, as it is part of the American story. Start with what that sheet of ice did to New England some 25,000 years back - as it ground across that part of the United States picking up, or pushing before it, whatever there was on the surface; scraping it clean - gouging out soft spots - passing over hard spots. When that glacier began melting off, it dumped what it had picked up - rock and soil - in a random way covering some places with boulders - others with the stuff that would one day become soils. The meltwater carried the finer grained material to the low spots, forming small pockets of what the early colonists to New England would one day clear for farms.
This was a special kind of land. It would never be farmed the way other colonists in places like Virginia, for example, would farm their land, not affected by ice, affected by warmer climate - and worked in large blocks as plantations, using slave labor.
In New England, farming was on small pockets of good soils, worked by the labor of individual families mostly. Out of that kind of farming came the kind of political democracy Thomas Jefferson wrote about in his time. It was the kind of farming - the kind of political democracy - New Englanders carried from one end of this country to the other with them as they headed west - just after the American Revolution, and on into the 1800's.
There was that ice in Paul Bunyan's background - and the particular kind of politics and economics it helped set up for the nation to be. And there was a lot of rain in Paul's background, too, which helped set up some other important words, characteristics - for Americans. Rain, 40 to 60 inches of it every year, putting a forest cover around those early New England farms - trees, for fuel to keep warm in winter - with which to build houses, tools, fences, wagons and ships - among which trees were animals, all kinds, which those early individual families had only to shoot to put food on their tables. Now - put all these things together - plenty of rain, on small pockets of good soils that grew quite a few different crops - surrounded by forests that gave that early farming family much of its needs. There, a man, or a family, could be independent - could go it alone - could be an individualist, Paul Bunyan style - on privately owned family worked farms. There in that early New England, the root of the words at the heart of what we've been - what we still are, in many ways.
What we were and are can never be explained to anyone, unless this unique combination
of things in our history is understood. We are an unusual story - as unusual as the people who created the myth of Paul Bunyan - but even more important, as unusual as the land that produced him. Because this land spelled freedom - and opportunity - as these words at the heart of what we were and are had never been possible for men before our American story.
The early immigrants who moved into North America in the early 1600's didn't know it then, but they set up shop in 13 colonies on the east of what would one day prove to be the richest single piece of real estate on earth. In the roughly 3 million square miles of territory that was to become 48 United States were crammed a greater quantity and variety of high quality things - good coal and iron, good soils and farmland, good oil and gas, good lumber - a greater quantity and variety of such things than could be found anywhere on earth under as favored conditions. And easily the most favored of those conditions was that there were no real obstacles to prevent those early colonists and settlers from doing pretty much as they pleased with this American land - and what there was on it and in it - to work out an entirely new way of life. The American Indians were on that land, but they could not match the numbers of settlers - or their strength in arms - when they really began moving west. And when they began moving west, the American story becomes really unique. Because it is the story of the world's first classless society: the story of equal opportunity for anyone to colonize and settle free land, and by the sweat of his own labor - to work out his own future.
It meant breaking away from the ideas and customs, the kind of history and traditions the early colonists brought with them to America - and working out pretty much new ideas in politics - in economics - but particularly in social matters. Go back and read the original roster of the Mayflower and see that the idea of "equality of opportunity for all men" did not walk ashore at Plymouth Rock with the early colonists - many "servants" are listed. The English class system did come ashore from the Mayflower - but fell apart soon after that landing, as "servants" went off and took up free land just like their masters. This meant that men and women who, back in Europe, would have had to stay in their own class - in America, could break free. A tailor's son did not have to be a tailor, like his father. A carpenter could turn farmer: a shopkeeper could turn trapper. A man could decide his own future. Nothing quite like this had ever happened before. Men had never been free this way before.
A very important way in terms of the competition we are about to offer this communist spearhead for ideas to influence Asia - with our own, in Hawaii. Because in a very important way, the Soviet Union is the only country on earth that can match the explanation we've gone over in this session to explain the words at the heart of the story we have to tell the world. That is, just as those words are rooted mainly in the kind of politics and economics, and social ideas that grew out of the ice, rain, trees and rock background of our New England - so have most of the words at the heart of the story
the Soviet Union has been telling the world grown out of that same combination. Because northwestern Russia, out of which the Russians expanded into their land empire, has
much the same ice-marked history as our New England. But no Paul Bunyan grew out
of that Russian background, as Russia expanded into empire. Instead, an Ilya Murometz came out of Russian history - a godlike, superhuman protector of men. Ina very important way today's competition of ideas between a Soviet Union and a United States is the difference between this Russian myth and our Paul Bunyan. And the difference is simple and clear. Free men settled this North American part of the world, the government followed after them into the land empire that became 48 states. The state settled this Russian part of the world, and unfree men. followed after the state into the land empire that has become today's Soviet Union. The difference was freedom and opportunity. There was that for men in North America: It was not the case for men in North Asia. The difference is still freedom and opportunity. And the problem Paul Bunyan has never faced before is, how to make those words work for him in the world around the United States., Why is this his problem? In a moment.
There's more to this famous event in American history than meets the eye. This event is the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It's also the time America decided to turn its back on the world. For about 100 years after this signing took place, the United States followed George Washington's advice to "avoid any entangling alliances" with an outside world always playing the dangerous game of power politics. That kind of international politics was not to be for us. Developing this rich continent was, and the story of Paul Bunyan is the story of free men using their unique opportunity to work out their own futures on this incredibly rich land, in isolation. The dynamics of democracy were to work at home.
Until this happened, in 1914. By 1917 the story of Paul Bunyan changes, in an important way. The United States turned its back on the intentions and the warnings of the Founding Fathers, by getting completely entangled in the dangerous, age old game of power politics. Americans didn't get into this mess because they wanted to. We fought here because World War I made clear that isolation was no longer a good way to defend the way of life we'd put together. Remember the slogan of World War I - to make the world safe for democracy? That- slogan went out of-fashion fast after World War I, because as things went in the world after that war (finally exploding into World War II) it was obvious - democracy had not been made at all safe.
There was nothing wrong with the slogan. There was something very wrong with the idea then that all that was needed to make democracy safe was to fight for it. There's been something very wrong with that idea ever since. It's ignored the problem.
From the beginning, Paul Bunyan's problem has been how to make democracy work -how to keep it safe - at home. Until World War I, this was a full time job - taking the ideas and principles laid out in our blueprint for a democratic republic in a small farming country, with few people, and a weak central government - and adjusting that blueprint to the expanding world of the 1800's when we began changing from a farming people over into a factory and business people; when our population began to skyrocket; when our problems began to call for a stronger central government. The record is there to show that we did this. We made that change. Yesterday's Americans did, when making democracy work and keeping it safe was an "inside" job. The record is there to show too that when making democracy work, and keeping it safe became an "outside" job - as it did after World War I - we, many of today's Americans, did not do this.
We're faced by tough problems in our time - but the only honest things that can be said about any of them is that they're tougher than they were. Basically, you and I are faced
by the same problem earlier Americans faced and solved. How do we adjust the' dynamics of democracy to the bigger world we've been living in since the first world war - when our world grew beyond just this continent. How do we make the world safe for democracy in our time - as yesterday's Americans did in theirs? Well, we step from that East-West Center out in our Hawaiian spearhead, into Part IV of the Dynamics of Democracy two weeks from tonight.