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, May 16, 1962, titled "DYNAMICS OF DEMOCRACY, PART IV".
Once upon a time, a Hindu wise man asked heaven for the right to make living men out of clay - to serve him. He was given the right, and they served him. But - he was warned by heaven that he must not allow his men of clay to grow too large - or he would no longer control his servants. So - when they grew as large as he, the Hindu wise man would write the word "dead" on their foreheads and they would crumble into.dust.
For many years the clay men served him well - and the wise man grew rich - and care-less: when one day he neglected to write the word "dead" on a fully grown servant, When he tried to correct his mistake, it was too late. The servant was too tall. His hand could no longer reach the servant's forehead. This time, it was the clay man that destroyed the wise man. A very old story out of India, where 2500 years ago, men living in the earliest known democratic republics were telling stories about the risks men must face when they are given rights -- but fail to use them responsibly.
A very old story - but very much a part of your affairs this minute, as we will get into this later on tonight - in "CHALLENGE" - about Part IV of the series, Dynamics of Democracy.
Somewhere among the 300, 000 parts that go into one of these things, there is a small coil of wire. It's connected to a relay in this missile's brain - its guidance system. Once that blast off gets it off the ground - that guidance system will go into action to steer that 1-1/2 million dollar machine to a point out in space where it can toss a satellite into orbit.
That is, normally the guidance system in these things will go into action to do that job. This time it didn't. That little coil of wire connected to that relay - worth about $2.60 -had a break in it. The electrical signal that should have reached that relay in the guidance system never go there. This was the result. This big project failed because somewhere a little part failed.
Big projects and little failures that can wreck them was the topic for the lead story in the copy of a British magazine I have here. It's an angry story, because the British are completely disgusted with the attitude of certain nations that cannot see - as this writer puts it here - that the most important problem in the world is to contain Russia. The big project the British are concerned there is protecting the future for freedom in the world against Russian imperialism: a project which will fail unless every country with an interest in freedom comes to its defense against the growing power and influence of a Russian empire. No nation can claim to be neutral in this big project. No nation interested in freedom can afford to trade with the Russians - to in any way aid them in their aggressive designs. Does all this sound familiar? Well. The familiar sounding stuff was written 109 years ago in this issue of Blackwoods magazine. And the country this angry article was written about, was the United States. Back in 1852, Americans apparently had other , more important things to be concerned about than the power-politicking of Britain and Russia to decide which would be the leading power on earth. Americans hadn't been a free and independent nation too long - our economy was just starting to roll, into the "good life" we were to know - we were all wrapped up in fighting the Indians, the Mexicans; in clearing our forests, opening new farmlands, pushing the frontier west. We wanted to trade - with anybody who would buy our products, and sell us the things we needed to develop our country. We were neutral in that squabble between the two great powers back in 1852. We wanted no part of it - when we were at that point in our history where most of the world is now. That is an enormously important point to get straight now, as we take off into this big project started as one of President Kennedy's first efforts to protect the future for what we mean by freedom in the world, in our time. This is what some 1000 young Americans may be doing in places ail over the world by the end of the year -working on large scale construction and industrial projects - helping to increase the food supply in what we call the world's underdeveloped places - tackling the problems of public health in those places, where disease is still widespread - serving in local governments, to help set up the kind of political organization needed to push economic development -and teaching, all kinds of things, in classrooms from the lowest grades right on up to the highest in the universities. This will be one of the most important projects in our history - as we put the dynamics of democracy to work to start doing in Asia, Africa and South America what, until now, those dynamics have done mainly here at home.
It's an important project, and risky. It can easily be the riskiest project in our history -if the kind of world those 1000, or however many peace corps are sent into isn't under-stood to be the kind of place we once were - back when this article was published in this magazine. The kind of place in which people are just about as interested in our power-politicking with a Soviet Union today to decide which will be the leading power on earth - as we were unconcerned about this only yesterday between an imperial Britain and an imperial Russia. The kind of place in which there will be little patience with a peace corps used as just a new kind of gimmick in our cold war with the USSR. We force people who come to propagandize us today.to register as foreign agents. We keep a sharp eye on them. We aren't particularly happy to have them around any more than Iranians, Indians or Indonesians are. Not understanding this can be the little failure that destroys the big project behind the peace corps.
The peace corps is a vital idea. Long overdue. It can do more to protect the future of freedom in our time than anything we've tried to do so far. It can, if what it does is geared not only to where Iranians, Indians and Indonesians are in history (back where we once were) - but geared also to what those people are. What the people are - for example - who heard that man, when he spoke from a balcony overlooking a central square in Teheran, in Iran, back in April, 1951. It was an important speech. It could have changed the future for freedom in the world, against us. But few Americans know this, to this day. Not that we didn't get Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh's message that April day 10 years ago, when he was the premier of Iran. Kick the foreign exploiters of our Land out, was the message. Take over the oilfields now run by foreigners. Nationalize the oil industry. Why let Englishmen, or Americans, or any Europeans milk Iran of this wealth, these resources. Iran's wealth for the Iranians. Out with the foreign domination. That was the message - and things went that way. The Aberdan refinery there was taken away from the British. England and Europe, using a great deal of the oil turned pit by this place, were hit by the crisis. Crises that affected everything there from factories to battleships. Great powers, remember, are great powers because of oil today. Without it, they are not. We got the message, but - as the newspaper clippings which tell about that event make clear - we found it very hard, dangerously hard, to take Dr. Mossadegh seriously. This clipping calls him a ham - a clown. This one pokes fun at him for what it calls his histrionics - mainly bursting into tears, weeping and wailing in public during his speeches. This news story describes him as a plain fraud - and his actions as soap opera stuff. The man, according to these reports, was obviously a phony. Anybody could see that.
Anybody, that is, who had never heard of Hasan and Husain - the prophet Mohammed's two grandsons. To all Shiite Moslems, they're martyrs to the faith. There wasn't much in the training of Americans like these newsmen to prepare them for one of Dr. Mossadegh's speeches - which to the average Shiite Iranian was the surest sign of a man's conviction and sincerity - carried over from the religious services of the Shiites during which public weeping and wailing shows honest and sincere grief over the martydom of Hasan and Husain. The same kind of carry over from religion in our civil affairs, as we go through to show our sincerity and honesty in swearing publicly on the Bible - in our courts, and in political swearing in ceremonies. The same, but different - in ways that made Americans underestimate Dr. Mossadehg's power in Iran, completely. From newsmen to readers, we hadn't been prepared for the facts of life in that part of the world.
A situation that hasn't changed much since then. Which bears hard on what the peace corps in particular can do to protect the future for free men. What it can do must make sense to Iranians, Indians and Indonesians. To know what makes sense to them is a matter of education. Old topic - but with a critical twist now; because it's the kind of education our schools and colleges not only have not passed on to the age groups with college training Mr. Kennedy hopes to see as the backbone of the peace corps - but it's the kind of education they're not able to pass on to them now. The real key to the success or failure of the big project behind the peace corps, is the kind of training those young people will need to do their work. The nation hasn't been faced with the fact yet -but what this means is the same great change in American education, as the peace corps is a great change in American foreign policy. Mr. Kennedy will have a much easier time pushing that change through our government, than he will pushing it through the deans, department heads and solidly vested interests that are American education today.
This fact can be the little thing that destroys the big project. Throughout our history, American education has worked to fit the student to an American environment. Now, a very different kind of education is needed. One that will fit the student to a world environment. It means revolution on the campus. Go through any catalogue of courses, for any of our top educational institutions, to see how poorly our best classrooms are to handle this new job. In what classroom can young people learn what Shiite Moslems consider to be sure signs of honesty and sincerity, as an example of the kind of things we must be taught before we can begin to teach Iranians - or anyone else. The problem is, an American educational system not geared to the realities of the world we live in - only part of which realities are out in the rice paddies of Burma and the cornfields of Bolivia. There is this part of those e realities, too - this letter from a young American in your community - which we will get to in just a moment.
The time is mid 1960. The place is the White House Youth Conference, in the nation's capital. For about a week, 9000 delegates gathered here in Washington, D. C. to talk over the problems that face young people in today's America. In one of the sections of this conference, set up to deal with problems in American education, something happened on the second meeting day to pinpoint the matter of an American educational system not geared to some very basic needs of tomorrow's peace corps, or the realities of the world today's young Americans live in.
What happened was that a young Korean boy, attending that section asked a simple question. He had been in this country for 3 years he said, - was just completing high school - and in a few weeks would be heading home. He had been bothered for some time by a question he hoped that group might help him answer. His question was - What was "democracy"? Oh - he'd seen the way we lived up close - from super-markets through symphony concerts and TV westerns. But this didn't explain to him what our democracy was ail about. He was sure to be asked about this when he got home. His friends were very interested in democracy - just how interested his high school and college friends made very clear last year when they threw Syngman Rhee out of the government. Could we help him?
It was a simple question. It had anything but a simple result. The next two days were spent trying to define our kind of democracy - without, at the end - settling for an explanation that really satisfied anyone. I was a member of that group, and was reminded of that incident the other day, when I received this letter from a high school student who could be from your own community. I'd like to read you this part of it - quote - "We have been discussing your programs about Dynamics of Democracy in my social studies class. After yesterday's class meeting we decided to write to you to ask your help in answering some questions we could not seem to answer. We know we live in a free country, and we have a democratic government, but we don't really understand it. First of all, What is democracy? What does it have to do with freedom? Our teacher says that freedom is possible without democracy and that democracy is possible without freedom. Would you talk about this on your program?" - and there is more, but at this point, unquote. From a young Korean visitor in our classrooms - the question. From a young American in our classrooms the question. But in those classrooms, apparently no answer. Why not?
In very large part because Mr. Jones who lives in Middletown, U.S.A. - where, several days after that White House Youth Conference, I spoke to a dinner meeting and told the story about what had happened there. I ended my remarks by asking that group to consider the problem. Did they have an answer to the question - What is democracy? Do you have an answer?
Mr. Jones didn't like the story. He got up to inform me that, in the first place, he saw no great need to be concerned about answering that Korean boy's question: and in the second place, no one with a grain of sense would try. Democracy, he said, was a generality. It was an abstraction like liberty, love or religion. It couldn't be defined.
It's a very short distance from Mr. Jones to the classrooms in our Middletown, USA - where things like Democracy, liberty, religion and love, too - are treated as abstractions, and are not defined. But it's a very long distance from Mr. Jones to this day, and these men - June 11th, 1776, when Robert Livingstone, Roger Sherman, John Adams, Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson began their work as a committee to do what so many Jones's in today's America believe cannot be done. With the Declaration of Independence they began to define the form and functions of our democratic republic. In that paper - in the articles of confederation - in the Federalist papers - in their personal writings: they had some very specific, definitive things to say not only about a democratic republic but about things like liberty, and religion, too. The Jones's haven't read them lately.
There is an answer to the Jones's argument. A man who has lost his liberty, knows it is very real - and no abstraction. A man denied the right to worship his god knows religion is not intangible - is no abstraction. A man or woman without love, knows he or she is not without abstractions. Democracy is real. The trouble is some people must lose these things before they really understand this - and it was because of such people, amongst us, that we began this series of programs on the Dynamics of Democracy with a speech of Abraham Lincoln. The one in which he warned against such people amongst us who cannot preach democracy, cannot practice it, cannot defend it - and above all, as Mr. Lincoln put it, cannot meet this greatest obligation as adult Americans: to pass on to young Americans an understanding of - respect and love for our way of life.
There is an answer to the question raised by that Korean boy, and the American high school student too - and no greater need facing us right now than that they be answered through the classrooms of our schools and universities. From those in your own community, to those in the East-West Institute out in Hawaii - as never before in our history, the future for our kind of democracy and freedom depends upon how well we explain our-selves - to others, and to ourselves. And as never before in our history, whether or not we can do this depends upon the Jones's and Smiths and Johnsons and Burkes and the rest - in, the communities, which still - despite all other changes in our way of life effectively decide what can be taught in our classrooms. 'What can be taught there - to answer these questions - in a moment.
Our kind of democracy is unique in history, mainly because our kind of freedom was unique. Our kind of freedom was half space, and half stuff. Uncluttered livable space, in which there was no government until we brought it in. Plenty of rich stuff, out of which to build a competitive, free enterprise system after we brought the government in. These were unique conditions. Our kind of democracy would have been impossible without them. If you doubt this, put those original 13 American colonies down just about anywhere else on earth. To keep it simple - to take them from the east coast or North America, and put them down on the east coast of Saudi Arabia, and allow those people to have the same history, the same ideas, the same culture they had when they left Europe to head for the New World. Would they have been able to build our kind of democracy here - where there is very little livable space - to this day, and little or none of the variety of rich stuff that let us do pretty much as we pleased in working out our way of life in North America. No coal, or iron, or copper, lead, zinc and the long list of things that were here to make us what we are today - but are not here. Any rugged individualists in the oasis farming places throughout this part of the world? Hardly. Paul Bunyan - the rugged individualist - would be run out of any of these oasis towns on a rail. He'd be dangerous here. Here, people cooperate to survive.
The story of our kind of democracy, and our kind of freedom is all we've covered in this series of programs - from Jeremiah the prophet, the first individualist in our religious history - through the right to question and dissent as the cornerstone of our way of life - to the ideas about private enterprise and capitalism that grew out of our kind of political democracy: all that against this background of space and stuff. And all that, from the taking of responsibility by the first individualist, to the peace corps -- all that based on the risky idea that the power to govern, and control human affairs was safest in the hands of the greatest number of responsible individuals.
NOTE: Dr. Albert Burke's many fans will be interested to learn that he will give a lecture entitled 'Ideas in Conflict' at the Cheshire Academy Auditorium, Academy Road, Cheshire, Connecticut on Tuesday, May 22nd at 8:30 P.M. The lecture is open to the public. Tickets may be secured by writing Box 138, Cheshire, Connecticut, or calling Cheshire BR2-3225. The charge is $1.50.