I appreciate the opportunity to be with you on the occasion of your mid-year convocation. The functions of the private university are basic and fundamental today for its task is a continuing search for the truth – both for its own sake and because only if we possess it can we be really free. Never has been the task of finding the truth been more difficult.
In the struggle between modern states "truth" has been a weapon in the battle for power – it is bent and twisted and subverted to fit the cause of national policy.
Frequently, we in the West are forced by this drumbeat of lies and propaganda to be "discriminating" in our selection of what facets of the truth we will disclose. Thus the responsibility of a free university to pursue its own disinterested studies is even more important today than ever before.
In our search for truth the American tradition of freedom is of inestimable importance. It was stated clearly by Thomas Jefferson in his first inaugural,
"...all, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression...if there be any among us who would wish to disolve this union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."
I thought this morning I would tell you something about the work and responsibilities of elective office and about some of the problems we have to face. I do this because, quite obviously, you as future graduates of a private university will be expected to assume leadership in a democratic society. The democratic system demands much of its members because it presupposes the essence of a rational, self-reliant citizenry – the majority of which when joined together will be wiser than would a governing elite. So the responsibility for action rests on both the citizen and the office holder. You will in future days be one or the other. In recent months the question has been raised by Mr. Attlee and others as to the true source of power in the American Federal system. I do believe that much of the confusion and some of the fear felt by the citizens of other countries toward the United States is the result of the failure to comprehend, particularly for those with a parliamentary system of government where responsibility and power are more closely united, the full significance of the differences between the two houses of Congress, between the Legislative branch and the Executive branch, and between the Federal and State Governments. Our constitutional founders believed that liberty could be preserved only when the motions of government were slow – the power divided – and time provided for the wisdom of the people to operate against precipitous and ill-considered action. The delegates believed that they were sacrificing efficiency for liberty. They believed, in the words of James Madison, who in his middle thirties was the most vigorous figure in Philadelphia, that they were "so contriving the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations...be the means of keeping each other in their proper places."
In our constitution there are limits placed on both the Federal and State Governments, and there is an area of individual liberty protected against both. Like the reign of law, this is a tenant that has roots deep in Graeco-Roman theory, medieval political theory, in Locke and Montesquieu.
The Senate today is a different body than its early framers imagined that it would be. The admission of new states – the passage of time – the 17th Amendment that resulted in the direct election of Senators instead of by the State Legislature, has brought about changes in its procedure and composition although the Senator’s tenure of office and unlimited debate still set it apart from the House. As one who has served in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, I must admit that the task of representation is not always as simple as it sometimes seems to students of legislative process. Those of you who aspire to public office should be reminded that it is not always easy to be on the side of the angels. I say this because it is only on rare occasions revealed to us on which side the angels stand. Indeed, in most issues it seems as though the angels are not present – the questions do not involve a moral issue of right and wrong – but rather the settlement of conflicts between powerful interests. For example, though I believe that the Federal Government has a paramount right to the oil of the Tidelands – nevertheless, I would not claim that the issue involved was a moral one. It is not a moral question, nor is the answer obvious as to whether we should vote twenty million dollars more for hospital construction even though we have at the same time a heavy deficit. It is not a moral question whether the "free speech" section of the Taft-Hartley Bill should be extended to representation elections. I am not even as convinced as is Mr. Dulles that foreign policy is a moral issue – although there is no doubt that the basic struggle with the Soviet Union is fundamentally a moral struggle. But if all our country’s foreign policy were based on moral grounds it would be difficult for us to reconcile our favoring freedom for the people behind the Iron Curtain on the one hand and yet opposing the people of Morocco obtaining their independence from France on the other – merely because we have air bases there.
Take the subject of the Federal Budget for instance. All of us would like to see it cut, and eventually get tax reductions. But what are the facts, first on the budget for spending and second on income or revenue? The real difficulty in effectuating any cut in the budget of sufficient extent to fulfill campaign promises lies in our expenditures for national security. Today, although economic aid has been sharply reduced and the military budget dangerously decreased, expenditures for national security – including the defense department, atomic energy, military aid abroad and civil defense – constitute over 70% of the federal budget. Housing, community development, education and research, social security, welfare, health and labor department appropriations when added together, on the other hand, total less than 4% of our federal budget.
Secondly, effective economies in government are restrained by the pressure on particular items. Rivers and harbors and flood control projects gain the support of those congressmen in whose jurisdiction they are located. Subsidies to airlines, shipbuilders, publishers, agricultural interests, and others all have powerful friends in their beneficiaries, as do such agencies as the veterans administration, soil conservation service, and many others.
And finally, is the matter of fixed charges and legal obligations. Such obligations make up some 20% of our federal budget, and include such large items as interest on the public debt (8%), which has been increased by the present administration; veterans’ compensation, pensions, and benefit programs (6%); farm price supports, public assistance and unemployment compensation payments, federal highway aid, and other payments fixed by law.
In short, the prospects of reducing the budget by more than $4 or $5 billion dollars next year will be difficult, particularly after this year’s reductions.
Realizing then, the difficulty of substantially lessening federal expenditures, let us look at the other side of the Federal ledger; our tax returns.
The income of the federal government during the present fiscal year is expected to reach less than $69 billion dollars, a sum which you will note is more than $3 billion dollars less than our expected expenditures. But, although I stated that expenditures for the following fiscal year might drop by some $4 or $5 billion, the income of the Federal Government is expected to drop by a like amount.
- On December 31, the Excess Profits Tax will expire, causing an annual loss of revenue amounting to $2.3 billion dollars.
- On January 1, individual income taxes will take a 10-11% across-the-board decrease, including a 1% reduction in individual capital gains tax, for a further annual loss of $3.1 billion dollars in revenue.
- On April 1, the corporation income tax automatically decreases 5%, for an annual revenue loss of $1.9 billion dollars.
- Several excise taxes now bringing in another $1 billion dollars will expire on that same April date.
Many, however, think that the cuts in the Federal Budget can come out of national defense. But what are the facts here – have we truly an adequate defense – are we spending too much for defense and therefore can afford to cut our defense budget or, in the light of world conditions are we spending enough? The facts are these. In the Fall of 1951, the Joint Chiefs of Staff recognizing the decisive nature of atomic weapons broke the compromise between the three services which had made for the equal distribution of funds. It was determined in view of the Soviet effort and capabilities by 1954 that the minimum goal for our security for that year would be 143 air groups. The targets for the Army and Navy meanwhile remained the same. Although the stretch-out of 1952 ordered by President Truman, which would have provided 138 wings by June 1955 lessened the impact of this decision on Air Force strength, the primacy of the air weapons was still recognized. The Truman Budget of 1953 called for an expenditure of over sixteen billion dollars for Air and eleven billion for Army and Navy respectively. When the smoke of Congressional battle cleared early last July, however, six months later, five billion had been taken from the Air Force, a billion from the Navy and over a billion added to the Army. This was a return to the balanced force concept with vengeance – was a wring-out rather than a stretch-out of Air Force strength. The preliminary budgets released for next year for the Defense Department, prepared by the new Joint Chiefs of Staff, were, therefore, most disappointing. In the words of the New York Times, "they were seen as furthering to a large degree the return of the principle of balanced forces that existed before the Korean war." The result will be that the United States will not possess more than 115 wings by June 1954 instead of 143, not more than 120 wings by June 1955, not more than 127 by June 1956. This is at a time when the Soviet Union, in addition to building the largest Army in the World and becoming the second largest Naval power in the World, is concentrating its attention on building the World’s largest Air Force. By the summer of 1954 they will possess over twenty thousand planes, nearly all of which are Jet, while a substantial part of our Air Force consists of planes that are propeller driven or Jets that are obsolete.
The point is that the questions on which we must vote only rarely involve issues that admit an easy solution. Some Senators vote to appease political pressures at home and stay in office and become according to Dryden’s Epilogue to the Duke de Guise:
"Damned neuters in the middle way of steering
are neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring;
Not Whigs, nor Tories they, nor this nor that
Nor birds, nor beasts; but just a kind of bat;
A twilight animal, true to neither cause
With Tory wings, and Whiggish teeth and claws."
While others, like Senator Taft, vote according to convictions. But their convictions are after all the result of their own lives, their environment, their experiences and prejudices, their glands and blood pressure, and thus their convictions may bring them to the wrong conclusion, as occasionally did Senator Taft’s, while the Senators who supinely follow the wishes of the people may end up voting right, for under our Federal system the needs of the individual state must be given recognition, for the sum of the real interests of the separate states, in those cases where they do not conflict with each other representing the National interest.
But in the final analysis the only way to national survival is for the people to support the point of view stated by Edmund Burke in his famous letter to the electors of Bristol. After stating his views on Britain’s relationship with the colonies, he wrote,
"Gentlemen, you have my opinion on the present state of public affairs...without troubling myself to inquire whether I am under a similar obligation to it, I have a pleasure in accounting for my conduct to my constituents. I feel warmly on this subject and I express myself as I feel.
"If my conduct has not been able to make any impression on the warm part of that ancient and powerful party, with whose support I was not honored at my election; on my side, my respect, regard, and duty to them is not at all lessened...But flattery and friendship are very different things; and to mislead is not to serve them. I cannot purchase the favor of any man but counsel from him what I think is ruin.
"By the favor of my fellow citizens I am a representative of an honest, well-ordered virtuous city;...I do, to the best of my power, act so as to make myself worthy of so honorable a choice. If I were ready, on my call of my own vanity or interest, or to answer any election purpose, to forsake principles...which I had formed at a mature age, on full reflection, and which have been confirmed by long experience, I should forfeit the only thing which makes you pardon so many errors and imperfections in me."
If we demand that our representatives measure up to the high standards that we expect of them it will depend basically upon our own conduct. In a democracy we get the kind of government we deserve, and unless we are honest and responsible we will not have honest and responsible representatives.
You would be interested to read in this light the letters that Congressmen receive. He receives letters from small businessmen who advocate free competition so that they may survive – but who insist also on price fixing through so-called free trade laws. The receive letters from farmers who pride themselves of their individuality and self-reliance – and yet who receive the largest subsidies of any group in the American economy. They receive letters from Southerners who believe in everything the Republicans stand for yet would not ever vote for the admission of the two-party system in the South. They receive letters from citizens who want economy but who also want funds for local airports, for the dredging of local rivers and harbors.
We cannot long afford the luxury of irresponsibility in national affairs. Today our economic and political system is competing with that of the Communists. In 50 years the Communists have moved outward with unparalleled swiftness so that now they control over one-third of the world’s population and their shadow hangs heavy over the lives of many millions of men in the free world. Their economic system – rigidly controlled – devoted completely to the aggrandizement of the state, steadily is closing the gap in productive supremacy that once we enjoyed. The troubles and pressures of the 18th century when our country began, pale in significance with those we now face for basically challenged our all of the suppositions upon which our founders based our government. That there are inalienable rights – rights granted by God and not by the state – that man is a political animal – that he is rational – that the state is organized for his welfare and to protect his rights – that rule by the majority is not only more just but more efficient.
Unless we can prove again the truth of these fundamentals then time will continue to serve the cause of our enemies.
As young men and women on this occasion, you can take no better theme than the words of Daniel Webster, spoken at Bunker Hill a century ago, which are now standing above the head of the Speaker of the House of Representatives. "Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its power, build up all its great institutions and see whether we also in our day and generation may perform something worthy of being remembered."
Source: Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files, Box 893a, "Convocation of Northeastern University, 2 December 1953." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.