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Commencement Address, The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, June 9, 1968
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Commencement Address, The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, June 9, 1968
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Gerald R. Ford Congressional Papers
Speeches
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Civil disobedience
Crime
Economics
Inflation (Finance)
Vietnam War, 1961-1975
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1968
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The original documents are located in Box D25, folder "Commencement Address, The
College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, June 9, 1968" of the Ford Congressional
Papers: Press Secretary and Speech File at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
Copyright Notice
The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of
photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. The Council donated to the United
States of America his copyrights in all of his unpublished writings in National Archives collections.
Works prepared by U.S. Government employees as part of their official duties are in the public
domain. The copyrights to materials written by other individuals or organizations are presumed to
remain with them. If you think any of the information displayed in the PDF is subject to a valid
copyright claim, please contact the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
Digitized from Box D25 of The Ford Congressional Papers: Press Secretary and Speech File at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS AT WILLIAM AND MARY
COLLEGE IN THE 275th YEAR OF ITS CHARTER IN
WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA, JUNE 5, 1968
[9]
"LAW, LEARNING AND LIBERTY"
PASKAL
PRESIDENT PASCHALL, FACULTY AND FRIENDS,
PARENTS AND STUDENTS, AND MEMBERS OF THE CLASS
OF 1968 OF THE COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY AT
THE CLOSE OF YOUR TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY FIFTH
YEAR, GREETINGS AND CONGRATULATIONS.
I AM GRATEFUL INDEED TO BE INVITED TO
THIS DISTINGUISHED LANDMARK OF HIGHER EDUCATION
IN AMERICA, AND DOUBLY DELIGHTED TO HAVE BEEN
CHOSEN BY A STUDENT COMMITTEE. IN ISSUING AND
ACCEPTING THIS HONOR NONE OF US COULD FORESEE
THE DARK CLOUD OF TRAGEDY WHICH HAS CAST ITS
SHADOW ON THE POLITICAL SCENE AND TRANSFORMED
TODAY INTO A NATIONAL DAY OF MOURNING. YET
THINK SENATOR KENNEDY WOULD HAVE BEEN THE LAST
-2-
TO WANT TO ROB YOU OF ANY OF THE JOYS OF THIS
LONG-AWAITED DAY -- NOT THAT MY SPEECH WILL BE
A JOY -- BUT ITS MESSAGE MAY ENCOURAGE SOME OF
YOU TO TAKE THE SAME VIGOROUS PART IN PUBLIC
AFFAIRS WHICH BOTH JOHN F. AND ROBERT KENNEDY
DID FROM THEIR YOUTH. THE RED THREAD OF
VIOLENCE AND INTOLERANCE, WITH ITS UGLY KNOTS
OF ASSASSINATION AND ANARCHY, WHICH HAS RUN
THROUGH ALL YOUR STUDENT YEARS, WILL NOT BE
SEVERED BY SORROWING NOR UNTANGLED WITH TEARS.
IN THIS SERENE SETTING, THE EVIDENT
FULFILLMENT OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS' DREAM OF
DOMESTIC TRANQUILLITY, IT IS HARD TO REMEMBER
THAT EVEN COLLEGE CAMPUSES HAVE NOT ALL ESCAPED
WHAT ONE WRITER CALLS "THE NEON GLOW OF THE AGE
OF COMFORT AND VIOLENCE." THEREFORE IT'S
REASSURING TO ME TO KNOW THAT THIS HISTORIC SIR
CHRISTOPHER WREN BUILDING, THE OLDEST
ADMINIS TRATTON BULL DING IN THE COUNTRY, WHICH
HAS BEEN SACKED BY BRITISH REDCOATS,
-3-
COMMANDEERED BY FRENCH OFFICERS, BURNED BY
UNION CAVALRYMEN AND FORTIFIED BY FEDERAL
CANNONEERS, HAS NEVER YET FALLEN TO THE STUDENT
BODY.
I DID NOTE THAT COMMENCEMENT EXERCISES
FOR THE CLASS OF 1849 WERE SUSPENDED, ACCORDING
TO THE COLLEGE RECORDS, "TO GIVE TIME FOR THE
EXCITEMENT AND PREJUDICE TO SUBSIDE." THIS
SIMPLY ILLUSTRATES THAT ANYTHING COLUMBIA
UNIVERSITY CAN DO, WILLIAM AND MARY DID A
CENTURY OR SO SOONER.
WHAT THAT EXCITEMENT WAS ALL ABOUT I'M
NOT SURE. IN MY DAY THE CHIEF CAUSES OF
LIVE
CAMPUS COMMOTION WERE SWALLOWING GOLDFISH, OR
RAIDING THE WOMEN'S DORMITORIES. I UNDERSTAND
THE LATTER SITUATION HAS BEEN REVERSED NOWADAYS,
WITH THE GIRLS DOING THE RAIDING, AND TO ME
THIS SEEMS TO BE REAL PROGRESS.
AS FOR THE GOLDFISH SWALLOWING
BELIEVE THE RECORD WAS 87 -- THAT APPEARS
: LIBRARY TO
-4-
HAVE PASSED QUICKLY, PROVING ONLY THAT WHAT YOU
PUT INTO YOUR HEAD IN COLLEGE IS MORE IMPORTANT
THAN WHAT YOU PUT INTO YOUR STOMACH.
YOU ARE PROBABLY ALL THOROUGHLY FED UP
WITH OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE ANTIQUITY OF THE
COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY, AND I SHALL LIMIT
MY REMARKS ON YOUR ALMA MATER'S AGE TO THIS
REMINDER: THE FIRST POOR PEOPLE'S MOVEMENT OF
THIS COUNTRY WAS ACROSS THE ATLANTIC OCEAN,
ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS AND THE PLAINS AND THE
MOUNTAINS, AND IT HAS NEVER REALLY CEASED.
THESE POOR PEOPLE, THESE OUTCASTS, THESE
DISADVANTAGED, THESE REBELS AGAINST THE OLD
ESTABLISHMENT, BROUGHT VERY LITTLE WITH THEM,
BUT WHAT THEY DID BRING WAS PRECIOUS AND MUST
BE PRESERVED. THEY BROUGHT, EVEN AS THEY
PROTESTED ITS CAPRICIOUS ABUSE, AN ABIDING
RESPECT FOR THE RULE OF LAW -- THEY BUILT
THEMSELVES SYSTEMS OF ORDERLY SELF-GOVERNMENT
EVEN BEFORE THEY ERECTED DRY HOUSES.
-5-
THEY BROUGHT, ALSO, TO THIS UNKNOWN AND
UNTAMED WILDERNESS, A PROFOUND APPRECIATION OF
AND INSISTENCE UPON THE DISCIPLINES OF FORMAL
EDUCATION. AS THEY BUILT CRUDE LOG STOCKADES
THEY ALSO BUILT SCHOOLROOMS, AND THEN OPENED
THEM TO THE CHILDREN OF THEIR SAVAGE ENEMIES
AS WELL AS THEIR OWN.
FINALLY, THIS POOR PEOPLE'S MARCH HALF
A WORLD AROUND, CARRIED WITH IT A COMMON
COMMITMENT TO THE FUTURE, TO THE HALF-HUMANIST,
HALF-THEOLOGICAL IDEA OF THE PERFECTABILITY OF
SOCIETY, THE ENLARGEMENT OF FREEDOM AND THE
INNATE AND UNIQUE WORTH OF INDIVIDUAL MAN.
THE COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY STANDS
PRE-EMINENT IN THE NURTURE OF THESE THREE
TRANSPLANTS TO THE NEW WORLD. SOME OF YOUR
STUDENTS, THOMAS JEFFERSON, JOHN MARSHALL, britt
PEYTON RANDOLPH AND GEORGE WYTHE, SYNTHESIZED
FORD
THEM INTO THE FOUNDATIONS OF OUR PRESENT
POLITICAL SYSTEM. EACH OF YOU, AS YOU RECEIVE
-6-
YOUR DEGREES THIS EVENING, REPRESENT THE LATEST
FRUITION OF THIS ANGLO-AMERICAN LEGACY OF LAW
LEARNING AND LIBERTY.
WE HEAR A GOOD DEAL THESE DAYS ABOUT A
"GENERATION GAP" WHICH IS SUPPOSED TO CUT OFF
EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION BETWEEN, SAY, THE CLASS
OF 1935 AND THE CLASS OF 1968. I AM NOT SURE
THIS IS ANYTHING MORE PROFOUND THAN A NEW NAME
FOR A VERY OLD COMPLAINT, PAPA ISN ST ALWAYS
LISTENING WHEN SONY IS TALKING, AND VICE VERSA.
YOUTH AND AGE -- OR FOR THAT MATTER MALE AND
FEMALE -- HAVE ALWAYS GRUMBLED THAT THEY WEREN'T
REALLY UNDERSTOOD BY THE OTHER, AND WHAT A DULL
LIFE IT WOULD BE IF WE ALWAYS WERE!
YOU CAN REACH BACK INTO THE PAST ABOUT
10 TIMES AS FAR AS THE FOUNDING OF WILLIAM AND
MARY, FOR INSTANCE, AND FIND IN THE PROVERBS
OF SOLOMON PAGE AFTER PAGE OF GOOD ADVICE FROM
FATHER TO SON, WITHOUT ANY HINT AS TO WHETHER
THE SON EVER PAID ANY ATTENTION TO IT.
-7-
ONE PROVERB THAT STICKS IN MY MIND,
HOWEVER -- AND IT IS HONESTLY THE ONLY THING
I CAN NOW REMEMBER FROM MY OWN BACCALAUREATE --
GOES LIKE THIS:
"WISDOM IS THE PRINCIPAL THING,
THEREFORE GET WISDOM;
"AND WITH ALL THY GETTING, GET
UNDERSTANDING."
NOW THIS IS PRETTY GOOD COUNSEL, COMING
FROM SOLOMON, WHO WAS REPUTED TO BE THE WISEST
MAN OF ALL TIME -- THOUGH I'VE ALWAYS WONDERED
HOW YOU COULD SAY THAT ABOUT ANYONE WHO HAD
700 WIVES AND 300 PLAYMATES IN ONE PALACE. YOU
HAVE TO ADMIT, THOUGH, THAT SUCH A HOUSEHOLD
DOES CALL FOR A LOT OF UNDERSTANDING.
I THOUGHT I'D SEE WHETHER SOLOMON'S
ADVICE TO HIS SON HAS ANY RELEVANCE FOR TODAY'S
GRADUATING SENIORS, SO I ASKED ONE OF MY YOUNGER
GENERATION CONSULTANTS, WHO STILL COMMUNICATES
FAIRLY SUCCESSFULLY, WHAT IT MEANT TO HIM:
-8-
"WISDOM IS THE PRINCIPAL THING;
THEREFORE GET WISDOM;
"AND WITH ALL THY GETTING, GET
UNDERSTANDING."
HIS ANSWER WAS NOT LONG IN COMING.
"I GUESS THAT MEANS, LIKE, FIRST YOU
GET WITH IT: BUT DON'T JUST GET WITH IT -- GET
INTO IT," IS THE WAY HE TRANSLATED IT.
NOT BAD. I DOUBT THAT IT WILL REPLACE
THE KING JAMES RENDERING, OR EVER GO VERY BIG
IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOLS. BUT I'M GOING TO TOSS IT
ACROSS GENERATION GAP TO YOU TODAY, FROM
SOLOMON AND ME, 30 YEARS I OR 30 CENTURIES GIVE
OR TAKE A LITTLE, AND a HOPE YOU'LL REMEMBER IT.
"DON'T JUST GET WITH IT -- GET INTO IT."
I CAN ALMOST HEAR SOME OF YOUR FATHERS
AND MOTHERS WHISPERING: NOW WHAT ON EARTH IS
HE TELLING THEM -- THEY'RE ALREADY MESSING INTO
A LOT MORE THINGS THAN THEY OUGHT TO BE.
WE
R.FORD
ALWAYS HEARD THAT JERRY FORD WAS A NICE,
SOLID
GER
-9-
TYPE AND HERE HE IS TALKING LIKE THAT
AND DID I HEAR STILL ANOTHER WHISPER?
YEAH, WHAT HAVE WE GOT TO GET INTO --
THE ARMY? WHO DO YOU THINK YOU'RE KIDDING ABOUT
LAW AND LEARNING AND LIBERTY. WE'VE HAD TOO
MUCH OF THE FIRST, JUST ABOUT ENOUGH OF THE
SECOND, AND NOT VERY MUCH OF THE THIRD. YOU AND
ALL THE POLITICIANS WHO HAVE BEEN RUNNING
THINGS EVER SINCE WE WERE BORN HAVE REALLY MADE
A MESS OF IT. SO NOW/YOU WANT US/TO GET INTO
IT WITH YOU.
WELL, WE ARE IN QUITE A MESS, THAT'S
CERTAIN. I SUPPOSE I COULD DUCK THIS BY SAYING
I I'VE BEEN IN THE MINORITY MOST OF THE YEARS VE
BEEN IN CONGRESS, SO DON'T BLAME ME. THAT
WON'T DO, OF COURSE. ALL ADULT AMERICANS HAVE
TO ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY, AT LEAST SOME
RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE WAY THINGS ARE, BECAUSE
AS THEODORE ROOSEVELT PUT IT BLUNTLY:
GERALD R.FORD LIBRARY
"THE GOVERNMENT IS US. WE ARE THE
-10-
GOVERNMENT, YOU AND 1."
ANOTHER PRESIDENT, WHO WAS ALSO A
PROFESSOR, SAID IT A LONGER WAY:
"GOVERNMENT," SAID WOODROW WILSON, "IS
MERELY AN ATTEMPT TO EXPRESS THE CONSCIENCE OF
EVERYBODY, THE AVERAGE CONSCIENCE OF THE NATION,
IN THE RULES THAT EVERYBODY IS COMMANDED TO
OBEY. THAT IS ALL IT IS. IF THE GOVERNMENT IS
GOING FASTER THAN THE PUBLIC CONSCIENCE, IT WILL
PRESENTLY HAVE TO PULL UP; IF IT IS NOT GOING
AS FAST AS THE PUBLIC CONSCIENCE, IT WILL
PRESENTLY HAVE TO BE WHIPPED UP."
THE TRUTH OF WILSON'S DEFINITION IS
NOWHERE MORE EVIDENT THAN IN THE HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES, WHICH IS WHY SERVING THERE IS
SO REWARDING. CONGRESS IS OFTEN THE SCAPEGOAT
FOR THE SINS OF AMERICAN SOCIETY BECAUSE CONGRESS
IS THE PEOPLE IN MICROCOSM. THIS YEAR AND EVERY
TWO YEARS WE GO HOME TO THE PEOPLE WHO SENT US
TO WASHINGTON AND DO WHAT MANY OF YOU HAVE BEEN
-11-
DOING -- SEEING ABOUT A JOB. IF THEY LIKE THE
WAY WE VE BEEN ACTING FOR THEM AND SPEAKING UP
FOR THEM THEY HIRE US FOR ANOTHER TWO-YEAR
CONTRACT, BUT IF THEY DON'T -- THAT'S ALL,
BROTHER. IF YOU DON'T GET GOVERNMENT THAT
SERVES YOU BEST OUT OF THIS ARRANGEMENT YOU AT
LEAST GET THE KIND THAT SERVES YOU RIGHT, AS
GOOD AS YOU DESERVE.
BUT IS THIS GOOD ENOUGH TO COME TO GRIPS
WITH TODAY'S CHALLENGES?
NO, FRANKLY, IT IS NOT.
WITHOUT WANTING TO STRIKE A PARTISAN
NOTE IT'S MERELY A FACT OF RECENT HISTORY THAT
MY PARTY GAINED 47 SEATS IN THE HOUSE TWO YEARS
AGO. WE NEEDED REINFORCEMENTS BADLY, WE
REJOICED IN THE QUANTITY, BUT EVEN MORE IN THE
QUALITY OF THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO JOINED OUR
RANKS -- MANY OF THEM NOT TOO FAR FROM THEIR
OWN COLLEGE COMMENCEMENTS.
THESE HARD-DRIVING, ENTHUSIASTIC AND
-12-
TOUGH-MINDED YOUNG LEGISLATORS NOT ONLY BROUGHT
THE INSIGHTS AND INITIATIVES OF A NEW BREED OF
POLITICIAN TO OUR DEBATES; ALREADY THEY HAVE
LEFT THEIR MARK ON THE CONGRESS. THEIR EXTRA
VOTES AND PERSISTENT PRESSURES HELPED TO CREATE
A NEW CODE OF OFFICIAL CONDUCT FOR THE HOUSE, TO
GREATLY IMPROVE AND STRENGTHEN ANTI-CRIME AND
CONSUMER PROTECTION LAWS, TO EXPOSE WASTE AND
CORRUPTION IN THE POVERTY AND FOREIGN AID
PROGRAMS, TO FOCUS ATTENTION ON URBAN NEEDS, TO
DEMAND LONG OVERDUE REFORMS IN THE MACHINERY OF
CONGRESS AND THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH, TO MENTION
ONLY A FEW AREAS OF THEIR ACTIVITY.
THE YOUNGER MEN AND WOMEN COMING UP IN
WASHINGTON ARE NOT ONLY WITH IT, THEY ARE IN IT--
AND WE ARE WAITING TO WELCOME MORE. BUT
OBVIOUSLY, IT WILL REQUIRE MORE THAN BETTER AND
BOLDER LEADERSHIP FROM GOVERNMENT TO COPE WITH
THE PROBLEMS THAT FACE US. IF MY GENERATION HAS
LEARNED NOTHING ELSE IN THE POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL
-13-
OF EXPERIENCE IT MUST BE THAT GOVERNMENT CAN
DO ONLY SO MUCH, THAT SIMPLY PASSING LAWS THAT
PROMISE EASY SOLUTIONS AND RAISING TAXES TO
REDISTRIBUTE THE GREAT WEALTH OF THIS COUNTRY
CANNOT BEGIN TO COPE WITH WHAT ARE ESSENTIALLY
MORAL AND INDIVIDUAL PROBLEMS, INDEED,
GOVERNMENT ACTION CAN COMPOUND THEM.
LOOK AT THE GRAVE ISSUES WHICH FACE OUR
NATION AND EACH OF US TODAY. ALL OF THEM, WHEN
YOU THINK ABOUT IT SERIOUSLY, ARE AT THE VERY
CORE MORAL CONCERNS. THE PROS AND CONS OF THESE
QUESTIONS ARE FUNDAMENTALLY MORAL ARGUMENTS, AND
PERHAPS THIS EXPLAINS WHY DEBATE HAS BECOME SO
IMPASSIONED AND EVEN VIOLENT.
TAKE THE WAR IN VIETNAM. THIS IS A MAJOR
NATIONAL CONCERN, PROBABLY THE CHIEF CONCERN OF
YOUNG AMERICANS. LET THERE BE NO DOUBT ON ONE
POINT -- WE ALL, EVERY ONE OF US, WOULD MUCH
RATHER MAKE LOVE THAN WAR. THIS WAR IS
UNPOPULAR, BUT I DOUBT VERY MUCH THAT THE
GERALD GERALD R FORD
-14-
UNITED STATES HAS EVER HAD A REALLY POPULAR
WAR -- EVEN THE WAR WITH SPAIN HAD ITS AFTERMATH
OF DISILLUSIONMENT. THE YEAR I WAS GRADUATED
FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN WAS THE YEAR
ADOLF HITLER SEIZED ALL POWER IN GERMANY -- AND
MY GENERATION DIDN'T LIKE THE PROSPECT OF WAR
DISRUPTING OUR LIVES ANY MORE THAN YOURS. BUT
THE NATION MET THAT CHALLENGE SUCCESSFULLY
BECAUSE AMERICA'S MORAL COMMITMENT TO THE CAUSE
OF HUMAN DECENCY WAS CLEAR, AND WE SAW IT
CLEARLY. WE FOUGHT THAT WAR FOR YOU -- EVEN
THOUGH YOU DIDN'T YET EXIST.
THE MORAL DILEMMA OF VIETNAM IS MUCH
MORE DIFFICULT. ITS MAGNITUDE IS MEASURED BY
THE CRUEL FACT THAT DURING JUST TWO WEEKS IN
(SLb)
MAY -- EVEN WITH PEACE TALKS GOING ON -- MORE
YOUNG AMERICANS WERE KILLED IN ACTION IN VIETNAM
THAN WILLIAM AND MARY WILL GRADUATE HERE TODAY.
IT HAS BECOME A CLICHE TO SAY THAT WE ARE BOGGED
DOWN IN A WAR WE CANNOT WIN AND CANNOT LOSE,
-15-
THAT THERE IS NO WAY OUT. THIS NATION HAS THE
MATERIAL STRENGTH AND HUMAN RESOURCES TO DO
ANYTHING IT SETS ITS MIND To, WHAT IS LACKING
IS THE CLEAR MORAL COMMITMENT OF OUR PEOPLE TO
A COURSE OF ACTION THAT IS BOTH REASONABLE AND
RIGHT, AND WE HAVE NEITHER NOW.
THE TASK OF LEADERSHIP IS TO SET SUCH A
COURSE, THE TASK OF CITIZENS IS TO MAKE SUCH A
COMMITMENT. IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, I SAY TO THE
CLASS OF 1968 TO GET INTO IT. WE ARE THE
GOVERNMENT, YOU AND 1. NOBODY IS GOING TO GET
US OUT OF THIS MESS EXCEPT OURSELVES.
TAKE CRIME AND LAWLESSNESS, RIOTS AND
DISORDERS. ALREADY, THIS LOOMS AS A LARGER
NATIONAL ISSUE THAN THE WAR, AND ALREADY IT
DIRECTLY AFFECTS MORE AMERICANS. HALF THE WOMEN
IN THIS COUNTRY ARE AFRAID TO WALK ALONE AT
NIGHT IN THEIR OWN NEIGHBORHOODS -- AND NO
WONDER, SOMEONE IS MURDERED IN COLD BLOOD EVERY
41 MINUTES AND A SEXUAL ATTACK OCCURS EVERY
BRART
-16-
19 MINUTES, ON THE AVERAGE.
THE CRIME RATE IS RISING EIGHT TIMES AS
FAST AS THE POPULATION. IN THE TIME I'VE BEEN
TALKING HERE THERE HAVE BEEN SIX ROBBERIES AND
NINE AGGRAVATED ASSAULTS SOMEWHERE IN AMERICA.
THEY SAY IN WASHINGTON IT'S SO BAD EVEN THE
PURSE-SNATCHERS AND MUGGERS ONLY WALK IN PAIRS.
EVERY OTHER AMERICAN NOW OWNS A GUN,
AND ADMITS IT. MORE ALARMING, ONLY LAST
AUGUST ONLY 27% OF THESE GUN-OWNERS SAID THEY
WOULD USE THEIR WEAPON AGAINST ANOTHER PERSON
IN THE EVENT OF A RIOT; NOW 67% SAY THEY'D
SHOOT UNDER SUCH CIRCUMSTANCES.
UNTOUCHED BY
THE POLLSTERS ARE THOSE WHO ARE KILLING JUST
FOR KICKS, OR OTHER MENTALLY SICK MOTIVES
OF COURSE THERE'S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
ORDINARY CRIMINAL ACTIVITY AND THE RIOTS AND
ARSON AND LOOTING THAT SWEPT MORE THAN 125
CITIES IN ONE WEEK LAST APRIL. BUT THE DISTINC-
TION IS NOT SO PRECISE AS ONE MIGHT THINK
IT
-17-
WAS ONE "ORDINARY" CRIME -- MURDER -- THAT
TRIGGERED THE "EXTRA-ORDINARY" RACIAL EXPLOSION
THAT FOLLOWED; AND THAT SPASM OF ANARCHY AND
DESTRUCTION WAS COMPOSED OF THOUSANDS OF
INSTANCES OF THE "ORDINARY" CRIMES OF BURGLARY,
THEFT, ARSON, ASSAULT AND MURDER.
WHAT ALL THESE FORMS OF LAWLESSNESS
AND VIOLENCE HAVE IN COMMON, WHETHER IN A DARK
ALLEY OR IN FRONT OF NEWSREEL CAMERAS IN BROAD
DAYLIGHT OR IN THE ACADEMIC HALLS OF IVY, IS THE
BREAKDOWN OF THE MORAL VALUES AND THE
BOUNDARIES AROUND BEHAVIOR BY WHICH SOCIETY
JUSTIFIES AND PROTECTS ITSELF.
THUS THIS NATIONAL CONCERN OVER CRIME IS
ALSO, AT THE CORE, A MORAL MATTER. IT HAS BEEN
PROVED TIME AND AGAIN THAT CONGRESS CANNOT
LEGISLATE MORALITY; ONLY IN AN IMPERFECT SENSE
CAN IT REINFORCE AND DEFINE, AS WILSON SAID, THE
AVERAGE CONSCIENCE OF THE NATION. TO SAY THAT
GOVERNMENT IS BASED UPON THE CONSENT OF THE
LIBRARY
-18-
GOVERNED IS TO STOP TOO SHORT; IT IS NOT
ENOUGH THAT A MAJORITY OF CITIZENS CONSENT TO
A LAW, AND AGREE TO OBEY IT THEMSELVES. THAT
SAME PREPONDERANCE OF THE PEOPLE MUST COMMIT
THEMSELVES TO THE MORAL PRINCIPLE THAT ALL LAW
MUST BE OBEYED.
THE TASK OF LEADERSHIP IS TO TRANSLATE
THE NATIONAL CONSCIENCE INTO EFFECTIVE LAWS AND
TO ENFORCE THOSE LAWS FIRMLY BUT FAIRLY AGAINST
OFFENDERS. THE TASK OF CITIZENS IS TO MAKE
THEIR BROAD COMMITMENT TO THE RULE OF LAW CLEAR
AND UNEQUIVOCAL AND TO USE THE READY ELECTORAL,
LEGISLATIVE AND JUDICIAL MECHANISM TO CHANGE
SUCH SPECIFIC LAWS AS SEEM TO THEM UNWISE OR
UNJUST. SO I SAY AGAIN TO THE CLASS OF 1968,
GET INTO IT. WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT, YOU AND 1.
NOBODY IS GOING TO GET US OUT OF THIS MESS
EXCEPT OURSELVES.
THE LAST GREAT NATIONAL CONCERN I SHALL
MENTION TODAY IS INFLATION, AND YOU MAY WONDER
-19-
HOW I AM GOING TO MAKE ECONOMICS A MORAL ISSUE.
YOUR PROFESSORS AND PARENTS ARE PERHAPS MORE
TROUBLED BY CONTINUOUSLY RISING PRICES, RISING
TAXES, RISING INTEREST RATES THAN YOU HAVE BEEN.
THE DOLLAR DRAIN HAS BEEN, FOR SOME OF YOU, A
PROBLEM BEST SOLVED BY A COLLECT PHONE CALL TO
DEAR OLD DAD. AND EVEN WHEN YOU'RE HOLDING DOWN
A JOB IN COLLEGE, IF I REMEMBER RIGHTLY, YOU
DON'T HANG ONTO ANY DOLLAR BILL LONG ENOUGH TO
REALIZE IT'S LOSING ITS VALUE.
BUT I ALSO SUSPECT A LOT OF YOU, IN
CONSIDERING WHICH JOB LOOKS BEST, HAVE HAD
OCCASION TO COMPARE THE FRINGE BENEFITS AND
VARIOUS PENSION PLANS AND PROFIT-SHARING
SYSTEMS WHICH TODAY'S EMPLOYERS USE TO ATTRACT
THE ABLEST GRADUATES AND KEEP THEM ONCE THEY'RE
ON THE PAYROLL. MAYBE YOU FIGURED YOUR CAREER
WOULD BE BRIGHTER WITH ONE COMPANY RATHER THAN
ANOTHER, EVEN THOUGH THE STARTING SALARY WAS A
LITTLE LESS
BECAUSE OF THESE PROVISIONS FOR
LIBRARY
-20-
YOUR FUTURE SECURITY AND THAT OF YOUR FAMILY.
YOU WOULDN' HAVE ANY DOUBT THAT IT WAS
A MORAL ISSUE IF
AFTER GIVING THE BEST YEARS OF
YOUR LIFE TO THAT EMPLOYER
YOU WERE TOLD WHEN
YOU REACH THE AGE OF 50 OR 60 THAT THEY'D SPENT
THE MONEY, YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS AS WELL, ON SOME-
THING ELSE, SO YOU'D HAVE TO GET ALONG ON HALF
THE PENSION THEY'D PROMISED YOU IN 1968.
IS IT ANY DIFFERENT WHEN THE GOVERNMENT
DOES THIS TO EVERYBODY? AND THIS IS EXACTLY
WHAT GOVERNMENT HAS DONE, AND IS STILL DOING.
IF AUNT JANE GAVE YOU A SAVINGS BOND -- ГЖНАТ
DO THEY CALL THEM NOW, PEACE BONDS?
-- WHEN YOU
GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL, LET ME BREAK THE
BAD NEWS -- INTEREST AND ALL, IT ISN'T WORTH AS
MUCH TODAY AS WHAT DEAR OLD AUNT JANE PAID FOR
IT IN REAL PURCHASING POWER. IF IT'S WRONG FOR
UNCLE SAM TO TAKE A FEW YEARS OUT OF A CITIZEN'S
LIFE AT THE START OF IT, AS SOME YOUNG PEOPLE
CLAIM, THEN IT'S CERTAINLY IMMORAL FOR UNCLE SAM
-21-
TO RUIN THE LAST FEW YEARS OF A CITIZEN'S LIFE
BY STEALING HALF HIS SAVINGS. AND THAT'S WHAT
INFLATION IS ALL ABOUT.
THE EXPERTS WARN WE'RE ON THE BRINK OF
THE WORST WORLDWIDE FISCAL CRISIS SINCE 1931.
I REMEMBER THAT AS WELL AS YOU REMEMBER YOUR
FIRST DAY IN COLLEGE -- AND I DON'T WANT IT TO
HAPPEN AGAIN. BUT IT CAN HAPPEN IF WE AS A
NATION FAIL TO PUT OUR FISCAL HOUSE IN ORDER,
IF WE HESITATE TOO LONG TO TAKE THE NASTY
ECONOMIC MEDICINE EVERY DOCTOR HAS PRESCRIBED.
THIS COUNTRY IS RICH AND PRODUCTIVE BEYOND
THE WILDEST IMAGININGS OF THE MEN WHO BUILT THIS
COLLEGE. OUR ECONOMY CAN "AFFORD" ANYTHING WE
NEED AND MUCH THAT WE REALLY DON'T NEED, BUT IT
CANNOT GIVE US EVERYTHING WE WANT AND EVERYTHING
WE MUST HAVE AND DO ALL THESE THINGS AT THE
SAME TIME.
MVST
WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO SET PRIORITIES
FOR OUR NATIONAL UNDERTAKINGS EXACTLY AS YOU
-22-
HAVE HAD TO SET PRIORITIES FOR STUDYING FOR
FINALS, WRITING TERM PAPERS, DATING AND DANCING
AND DEMONSTRATING AND WHATEVER ELSE SENIORS DO
THESE DAYS. A SOUND DOLLAR DOESN'T TURN
EVERYBODY ON EMOTIONALLY LIKE THE DEADLY WAR IN
VIETNAM AND THE CRIME RAGING IN OUR CITIES, BUT
IT TOO DEMANDS CITIZEN COMMITMENT AND ENLIGHTENED
LEADERSHIP. IT TOO IS SOMETHING THE CLASS OF
1968 OUGHT TO GET INTO. WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT,
YOU AND 1. NOBODY IS GOING TO GET US OUT OF THIS
MESS EXCEPT OURSELVES.
WHY DO I KEEP TELLING YOU TO GET COMMIT-
TED, TO BECOME INVOLVED, NOT JUST TO GET WITH IT
BUT TO GET INTO IT? I'VE VISITED 22 COLLEGE AND
UNIVERSITY CAMPUSES ALREADY THIS YEAR AND I KNOW
VERY WELL THATSJUST WHAT YOU INTEND TO DO. I AM
PERFECTLY AWARE OF WHAT THIS GENERATION OF
STUDENTS IS LIKE, AND I'M NOT CONFUSED BY THE
ANTICS OF AN IMMATURE HANDFUL WHO BANG THEIR
HEADS ON THE FLOOR OR THREATEN TO HOLD THEIR
-23-
BREATH IF THEY CANT HAVE THEIR WAY -- OR
DON'T GET ENOUGH ATTENTION. I'M MORE IMPRESSED
WITH SEN. McCARTHY'S YOUNG VOLUNTEER WORKERS
THAN I AM WITH HIS POLITICS, TO BE HONEST, BUT
I'D RATHER YOU ALL WENT OUT AND WORKED TO ELECT
DEMOCRATS THAN TO OUT TO STORM THE PENTAGON, DO
BLOODY BATTLE WITH THE POLICE, OR SHOUT DOWN
THOSE WITH WHOM YOU DISSENT.
YOU ARE GRADUATING FROM COLLEGE IN A
PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN YEAR, AND WHILE THIS IS
HIDDEN BY A LOT OF FUN AND HOOPLA THERE ARE GRAVE
AND VITAL CHOICES TO BE MADE NEXT NOVEMBER THAT
WILL AFFECT YOUR LIVES VERY DIRECTLY. DON'T
JUST GET WITH IT -- GET INTO IT.
I RECENTLY GOT A LOOK AT A VERY
EXTENSIVE SURVEY MADE BY THE GALLUP POLL FOR THE
AMERICAN HERITAGE FOUNDATION ON THE ATTITUDES
AND
POLITICAL OPINIONS OF YOUNG AMERICANS AGED
21 THROUGH 29. MUCH OF IT HASN'T BEEN PUBLISHED,
AND IT'S AS FULL OF SURPRISES AND CONTRADICTIONS
-24-
AS YOUTH ITSELF.
FIRST, YOUNG PEOPLE LIKE TO THINK OF
THEMSELVES AS "INDEPENDENTS" IN POLITICS --
THIS CATEGORY OUTNUMBERS BOTH REPUBLICANS AND
DEMOCRATS, AND AMONG COLLEGE GRADUATES IT
AMOUNTS TO 44 PERCENT. YOUNG MEN ARE MORE
INDEPENDENT THAN YOUNG WOMEN -- I'M SPEAKING
STRICTLY OF POLITICS -- AND, CURIOUSLY, THOSE
TRADITIONAL BASTIONS OF DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN
STRENGTH, THE SOUTH AND MIDWEST, TURN OUT THE
MOST INDEPENDENT 20-YEAR-OLDS
IN THIS AGE GROUP TWO-THIRDS EXPRESSED
CONSIDERABLE INTEREST IN POLITICS, AND THIS ROSE
TO 80 PER CENT ON THE COLLEGE CAMPUSES.
FORTY-ONE PERCENT SAID THEY'D BE WILLING TO
VOLUNTEER FOR CAMPAIGN WORK AND 42 PERCENT WOULD
KICK IN $5 FOR THEIR FAVORITE CANDIDATE OR
PARTY ---6R A LOT BETTER ON BOTH COUNTS THAN
THEIR AFFLUENT AND COMPLACENT ELDERS.
LIVERSE
BUT THEN WHEN IT COMES TO THE SIMPLEST
-25-
TEST OF POLITICAL COMMITMENT -- VOTING IN A
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION -- YOU DON'T COME OFF SO
WELL. TOO OFTEN, "INDEPENDENT" REALLY MEANS
"INDIFFERENT." WHEN A RECORD 65 PERCENT OF THE
ELIGIBLE ELECTORATE VOTED IN THE CLIFFHANGER
KENNEDY-NIXON CONTEST OF 1960, ONLY 54 PERCENT
OF THOSE IN THEIR TWENTIES TURNED OUT. IN '64
THE RECORD WAS SLIGHTLY WORSE.
THIS YEAR, ALTHOUGH IT'S EARLY IN THE
GAME, ONLY 48 PERCENT OF THOSE IN THE 21 TO 29
BRACKET ARE REGISTERED TO VOTE IN THE PRECINCT
WHERE THEY LIVE. FOR ALL THEIR EXPRESSED
INTEREST, FOR ALL THEIR INVOLVEMENT WITH EXCITING
CAUSES AND FOR ALL THEIR IDEALS, ONLY ABOUT
13 MILLION MOUNG AMERICANS ARE ACTUALLY EXPECTED
TO CAST THEIR BALLOTS THIS YEAR.
SURE, YOU GET BUSY, DOING YOUR JOB,
T
STARING A HOME, MOVING AROUND. BUT THAT'S WHY
I KEEP HARPING ON MY THEME: GET INTO IT, AND
STAY IN.
-26-
IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE WAY IT IS, DO
SOMETHING ABOUT IT. MAYBE YOU DON'T WANT TO MAKE
PUBLIC SERVICE YOUR CAREER, OR EVER RUN FOR
ELECTIVE OFFICE. BUT THERE ARE A MILLION WAYS
EACH OF YOU CAN UPGRADE THE STANDARDS OF POLITICS
AND THE QUALITY OF GOVERNMENT AT EVERY LEVEL.
YOU CAN'T ALL BE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES,
IN SPITE OF WILLIAM AND MARY'S HEADSTART PROGRAM
IN THIS RESPECT, BUT PROBABLY ALL OF YOU WHO WANT
TO BADLY ENOUGH TO WORK AT IT COULD BE PRESIDENT
OF A SCHOOL BOARD, OR CHAIRMAN OF A COUNTY
CENTRAL COMMITTEE. AND REMEMBER, IF YOU DON'T
YOU CAN BE SURE SOME IDIOT WILL GET THE JOB AND
DO EVERYTHING WRONG. NOBODY IS GOING TO GET US
OUT OF THIS MESS EXCEPT OURSELVES. WE ARE THE
GOVERNMENT, YOU AND 1.
ONE FINAL WORD AS ONE WHO HAS SOME
EXPERIENCE WITH MINORITY STATUS. I HOPE MINE IS
TEMPORARY, BUT YOURS IS PERMANENT. YOU ARE
LIBRAR
ABOUT TO JOIN THE OLDEST MINORITY IN THE WORLD --
-27-
THOSE WHO HAVE THE BRAINS AND THE DISCIPLINES
OF EDUCATION THAT ENABLE THEM TO GIVE
CIVILIZATION A LITTLE BIT MORE THAN THEY TAKE
FROM IT.
THE EDUCATIONAL EXPLOSION IN THIS
COUNTRY HAS BEEN FAR MORE SIGNIFICANT THAN ANY
NUCLEAR BLAST. IN 1900 ALL THE INSTITUTIONS OF
HIGHER LEARNING IN AMERICA AWARDED 27,410 DEGREES
ONLY 5,237 TO WOMEN. WHEN I RECEIVED MY
DIPLOMA AT ANN ARBOR, THE COMBINED CLASS OF
1935 WAS NEARLY FIVE TIMES THAT LARGE, TWO-FIFTHS
OF THEM WOMEN. YOU ARE AMONG AN ESTIMATED
673,000 SENIORS GRADUATING THIS SPRING, ANOTHER
FOURFOLD INCREASE. THERE STILL AREN'T QUITE
ENOUGH GIRLS TO GO AROUND -- I THINK THEY SEE
TO THAT.
BUT WE BACHELORS OF ARTS AND ALL LIVING
AMERICANS WHO HAVE EARNED A COLLEGE DEGREE STILL
AMOUNT TO ONLY ABOUT 11 PER CENT OF THE
ADULT POPULATION. WE ARE STILL IN THE MINORITY
-28-
AND ARE LIKELY TO REMAIN THERE ALL OUR DAYS.
SO LET'S TAKE AS OUR MOTTO "BUILD, MAN, BUILD!"
INSTEAD OF "BURN, BABY, BURN."
TRY
LET'S BUILD ON THE SOLID TRIAD OF LAW,
LEARNING AND LIBERTY -- NOT FOR OUR ANCESTORS'
SAKES, BUT FOR OUR DESCENDENTS. LET'S NOT
QUENCH THE REBEL AND THE DISSENTER IN US BECAUSE
OUR FATHERS WERE REBELS AND DISSENTERS AND
SO WILL OUR CHILDREN BE. BUT LET'S BUILD
INSTEAD OF BURN, WORK INSTEAD OF WRECK AND HELP
INSTEAD OF HATE.
JOHN STEINBECK IN "THE GRAPES OF WRATH"
WROTE THAT, ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE, "MAN GROWS
BEMOND HIS WORK, WALKS UP THE STAIRS OF HIS
CONCEPTS, EMERGES AHEAD OF HIS ACCOMPLISHMENTS."
YOU HAVE FINISHED THE WORK OF THE
CLASSROOM, YOU HAVE SORTED OUT YOUR CONCEPTS,
AND NOW COMES THE TIME FOR ACCOMPLISHMENT.
COME OUT AHEAD, CLASS OF 1968, AND GOD
BE WITH YOU.
GERALD
LIBRARY
- END -
O Office Copy
FOR RELEASE UPON DELIVERY
5 p.m. Sunday, June 9, 1968
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS BY REP. GERALD R. FORD
(Republican of Michigan)
MINORITY LEADER OF THE U. S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
TO
THE COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY IN THE 275th YEAR
OF ITS CHARTER IN WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
"LAW, LEARNING AND LIBERTY"
President Paschall, faculty and friends, parents and students, and members
of the Class of 1968 of the College of William and Mary at the close of your two
hundred and seventy fifth year, greetings and congratulations.
I am grateful indeed to be invited to this distinguished landmark of higher
education in America, and doubly delighted to have been chosen by a student
committee. In issuing and accepting this honor none of us could foresee the dark
cloud of tragedy which has cast its shadow on the political scene and transformed
today into a national day of mourning. Yet I think Senator Kennedy would have been
the last to want to rob you of any of the joys of this long-awaited day -- not that
my speech will be a joy but its message may encourage some of you to take the
same vigorous part in public affairs which both John F. and Robert Kennedy did from
their youth. The red thread of violence and intolerance, with its ugly knots of
assassination and anarchy, which has run through all your student years, will not
be severed by sorrowing nor untangled with tears.
In this serene setting, the evident fulfillment of the Founding Fathers'
dream of domestic tranquillity, it is hard to remember that even college campuses
have not all escaped what one writer calls "the neon glow of the age of comfort and
violence." Therefore it's reassuring to me to know that this historic Sir
Christopher Wren Building, the oldest administration building in the country, which
has been sacked by British Redcoats, commandeered by French officers, burned by
Union cavalrymen and fortified by Federal cannoneers, has never yet fallen to the
student body.
I did note that Commencement Exercises for the Class of 1849 were suspended,
according to the college records, "to give time for the excitement and prejudice
to subside." This simply illustrates that anything Columbia University can do,
William and Mary did a century or so sooner.
What that excitement was all about I'm not sure. In my day the chief causes
of campus commotion were swallowing goldfish, or raiding the women's dormitories.
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-2-
I understand the latter situation has been reversed nowadays, with the girls doing
the raiding, and to me this seems to be real progress.
As for the goldfish swallowing -- I believe the record was 87 -- that appears
to have passed quickly, proving only that what you put into your head in college
is more important than what you put into your stomach.
You are probably all thoroughly fed up with observations about the antiquity
of the College of William and Mary, and I shall limit my remarks on your alma
mater's age to this reminder: the first poor people's movement of this country was
across the Atlantic Ocean, across the mountains and the plains and the mountains,
and it has never really ceased.
These poor people, these outcasts, these disadvantaged, these rebels against
the old Establishment, brought very little with them, but what they did bring was
precious and must be preserved. They brought, even as they protested its capricious
abuse, an abiding respect for the rule of law -- they built themselves systems of
orderly self-government even before they erected dry houses.
They brought, also, to this unknown and untamed wilderness, a profound
appreciation of and insistence upon the disciplines of formal education. As they
built crude log stockades they also built schoolrooms, and then opened them to the
children of their savage enemies as well as their own.
Finally, this poor people's march half a world around carried with it a
common commitment to the future, to the half-humanist, half-theological idea of
the perfectability of society, the enlargement of freedom and the innate and unique
worth of individual man.
The College of William and Mary stands pre-eminent in the nurture of these
three transplants to the New World. Some of your students, Thomas Jefferson, John
Marshall, Peyton Randolph and George Wythe, synthesized them into the foundations
of our present political system. Each of you, as you receive your degrees this
evening, represent the latest fruition of this anglo-American legacy of law,
learning and liberty.
We hear a good deal these days about a "generation gap" which is supposed to
cut off effective communication between, say, the Class of 1935 and the Class of
1968. I am not sure this is anything more profound than a new name for a very old
complaint, papa isn't always listening when sonny is talking, and vice versa.
Youth and age or for that matter male and female -- have always grumbled that
they weren't really understood by the other, and what a dull life it would be if
we always were!
(more)
-3-
You can reach back into the past about 10 times as far as the founding of
William and Mary, for instance, and find in the Proverbs of Solomon page after page
of good advice from father to son, without any hint as to whether the son ever paid
any attention to it.
One proverb that sticks in my mind, however -- and it is honestly the only
thing I can now remember from my own baccalaureate -- goes like this:
"Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom;
"And with all thy getting, get understanding."
Now this is pretty good counsel, coming from Solomon, who was reputed to be
the wisest man of all time -- though I've always wondered how you could say that
about anyone who had 700 wives and 300 playmates in one palace. You have to admit,
though, that such a household does call for a lot of understanding.
I thought I'd see whether Solomon's advice to his son has any relevance for
today's graduating seniors, so I asked one of my younger generation consultants,
who still communicates fairly successfully, what it meant to him:
"Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom;
"And with all thy getting, get understanding."
His answer was not long in coming.
"I guess that means, like, first you get with it; but don't just get with
it -- get into it," is the way he translated it.
Not bad. I doubt that it will replace the King James rendering, or ever go
very big in the Sunday Schools. But I'm going to toss it across Generation Gap
to you today, from Solomon and me, 30 years or 30 centuries give or take a little,
and hope you'll remember it:
"Don't just get with it get into it."
I can almost hear some of your fathers and mothers whispering: Now what on
earth is he telling them -- they're already messing into a lot more things than they
ought to be. We always heard that Jerry Ford was a nice, solid type and here he is
talking like that!
And did I hear still another whisper?
Yeah, what have we got to get into -- the Army? Who do you think you're
kidding about law and learning and liberty. We've had too much of the first, just
about enough of the second, and not very much of the third. You and all the
politicians who have been running things ever since we were born have really made
a mess of it. So now you want us to get into it with you.
Well, we are in quite a mess, that's certain. I suppose I could duck this
(more)
-4-
by saying I've been in the minority most of the years I've been in Congress, so
don't blame me. That won't do, of course. All adult Americans have to accept
responsibility, at least some responsibility, for the way things are; because as
Theodore Roosevelt put it bluntly:
"The government is us; we are the government, you and I."
Another President, who was also a professor, said it a longer way:
"Government," said Woodrow Wilson, "is merely an attempt to express the
conscience of everybody, the average conscience of the nation, in the rules that
everybody is commanded to obey. That is all it is. If the government is going
faster than the public conscience, it will presently have to pull up; if it is not
going as fast as the public conscience, it will presently have to be whipped up."
The truth of Wilson's definition is nowhere more evident than in the House
of Representatives, which is why serving there is so rewarding. Congress is often
the scapegoat for the sins of American society because Congress is the people in
microcosm. This year and every two years we go home to the people who sent us to
Washington and do what many of you have been doing -- seeing about a job. If they
like the way we've been acting for them and speaking up for them they hire us for
another two-year contract, but if they don't -- that's all, brother. If you don't
get government that serves you best out of this arrangement you at least get the
kind that serves you right, as good as you deserve.
But is this good enough to come to grips with today's challenges?
No, frankly, it is not.
Without wanting to strike a partisan note it's merely a fact of recent history
that my party gained 47 seats in the House two years ago. We needed reinforcements
badly, we rejoiced in the quantity, but even more in the quality of the men and
women who joined our ranks -- many of them not too far from their own college
commencements.
These hard-driving, enthusiastic and tough-minded young legislators not only
brought the insights and initiatives of a new breed of politician to our debates;
already they have left their mark on the Congress. Their extra votes and persistent
pressures helped to create a new code of official conduct for the House, to greatly
improve and strengthen anti-crime and consumer protection laws, to expose waste and
corruption in the poverty and foreign aid programs, to focus attention on urban
needs, to demand long overdue reforms in the machinery of Congress and the Executive
Branch, to mention only a few areas of their activity.
The younger men and women coming up in Washington are not only with it, they
(more)
-5-
are in it -- and we are waiting to welcome more. But obviously, it will require
more than better and bolder leadership from government to cope with the problems
that face us. If my generation has learned nothing else in the postgraduate school
of experience it must be that government can do only so much, that simply passing
laws that promise easy solutions and raising taxes to redistribute the great
wealth of this country cannot begin to cope with what are essentially moral and
individual problems; indeed, government action can compound them.
Look at the grave issues which face our nation and each of us today. All
of them, when you think about it seriously, are at the very core moral concerns.
The pros and cons of these questions are fundamentally moral arguments, and perhaps
this explains why debate has become so impassioned and even violent.
Take the war in Vietnam. This is a major national concern, probably the
chief concern of young Americans. Let there be no doubt on one point -- we all,
every one of us, would much rather make love than war. This war is unpopular, but
I doubt very much that the United States has ever had a really popular war -- even
the war with Spain had its aftermath of disillusionment. The year I was graduated
from the University of Michigan was the year Adolf Hitler seized all power in
Germany -- and my generation didn't like the prospect of war disrupting our lives
any more than yours. But the nation met that challenge successfully because
America's moral commitment to the cause of human decency was clear, and we saw it
clearly. We fought that war for you -- even though you didn't yet exist.
The moral dilemma of Vietnam is much more difficult. Its magnitude is
measured by the cruel fact that during just two weeks in May -- even with peace
talks going on -- more young Americans were killed in action in Vietnam than
William and Mary will graduate here today. It has become a cliche to say that we
are bogged down in a war we cannot win and cannot lose, that there is no way out.
This nation has the material strength and human resources to do anything it sets
its mind to; what is lacking is the clear moral commitment of our people to a
course of action that is both reasonable and right, and we have neither now.
The task of leadership is to set such a course; the task of citizens is to
make such a commitment. In one way or another, I say to the Class of 1968 to get
into it. We are the government, you and I. Nobody is going to get us out of this
mess except ourselves.
Take crime and lawlessness, riots and disorders. Already, this looms as a
larger national issue than the war, and already it directly affects more Americans.
Half the women in this country are afraid to walk alone at night in their own
(more)
-6-
neighborhoods -- and no wonder, someone is murdered in cold blood every 41 minutes
and a sexual attack occurs every 19 minutes, on the average.
The crime rate is rising eight times as fast as the population. In the time
I've been talking to you there have been six robberies and nine aggravated assaults
somewhere in America. They say in Washington it's so bad even the purse-snatchers
and muggers only walk in pairs.
Every other American now owns a gun, and admits it. More alarming, only last
August only 27% of these gun-owners said they would use their weapon against
another person in the event of a riot; now 67% say they'd shoot under such circum-
stances. Untouched by the pollsters are those who are killing just for kicks, or
from mentally sick motives.
Of course there's a difference between ordinary criminal activity and the
riots and arson and looting that swept more than 125 cities in one week last April.
But the distinction is not so precise as one might think; it was one "ordinary"
crime murder -- that triggered the "extra-ordinary" racial explosion that
followed; and that spasm of anarchy and destruction was composed of thousands of
instances of the "ordinary" crimes of burglary, theft, arson, assault and murder.
What all these forms of lawlessness and violence have in common, whether in
a dark alley or in front of newsreel cameras in broad daylight or in the academic
halls of ivy, is the breakdown of the moral values and the boundaries around
behavior by which society justifies and protects itself.
Thus this national concern over crime is also, at the core, a moral matter.
It has been proved time and again that Congress cannot legislate morality; only
in an imperfect sense can it reinforce and define, as Wilson said, the average
conscience of the nation. To say that government is based upon the consent of the
governed is to stop too short; it is not enough that a majority of citizens consent
to a law, and agree to obey it themselves. That same preponderance of the people
must commit themselves to the moral principle that law must be obeyed.
The task of leadership is to translate the national conscience into effective
laws and to enforce those laws firmly but fairly against offenders. The task of
citizens is make their broad commitment to the rule of law clear and unequivocal
and to use the ready electoral, legislative and judicial mechanisms to change such
specific laws as seem to them unwise or unjust. So I say again to the Class of
1968, get into it. We are the government, you and I. Nobody is going to get us
out of this mess except ourselves.
The last great national concern I shall mention today is inflation, and you
(more)
-7-
may wonder how I am going to make economics a moral issue. Your professors and
parents are perhaps more troubled by continuously rising prices, rising taxes, rising
interest rates than you have been. The dollar drain has been, for some of you, a
problem best solved by a collect phone call to Daddy. And even when you're holding
down a job in college, if I remember rightly, you don't hang onto any dollar bill
long enough to realize it's losing its value.
But I also suspect a lot of you, in considering which job looks best, have
had occasion to compare the fringe benefits and various pension plans and profit-
sharing systems which today's employers use to attract the ablest graduates and keep
them after they're on the payroll. Maybe you figured your career would be brighter
with one company rather than another, even though the starting salary was a little
less, because of these provisions for your future security and that of your family.
You wouldn't have any doubt that it was a moral issue if, after giving the
best years of your life to that employer, you were told when you reach the age of
50 or 60 that they'd spent the money, your contributions as well, on something else,
so you'd have to get along on half the pension they'd promised you in 1968.
Is it any different when the government does this to everybody? And this
is exactly what government has done, and is still doing. If Aunt Jane gave you a
savings bond - - what do they call them now, Peace Bonds? when you graduated
from high school, let me break the bad news -- interest and all, it isn't worth as
much today as what the old dear paid for it in real purchasing power. If it's
wrong for Uncle Sam to take a few years out of a citizen's life at the start of it,
as some young people claim, then it's certainly immoral for Uncle Sam to ruin the
last few years of a citizen's life by stealing half his savings. And that's what
inflation is all about.
The experts warn we're on the brink of the worst worldwide fiscal crisis
since 1931. I remember that as well as you remember your first day in college --
and I don't want it to happen again. But it can happen if we as a nation fail to
put our fiscal house in order, if we hesitate too long to take the nasty economic
medicine every doctor has prescribed. This country is rich and productive beyond
the wildest imaginings of the men who built this college. Our economy can "afford"
anything we need and much that we really don't need, but it cannot give us every-
thing we want and everything we must have and do all these things:at the same time.
We are going to have to set priorities for our national undertakings exactly
as you have had to set priorities for studying for finals, writing term papers,
dating and dancing and demonstrating and whatever else seniors do these days. A
(more)
-8-
sound dollar doesn't turn everybody on emotionally like the deadly war in Vietnam
and the crime raging in our cities, but it too demands citizen commitment and
enlightened leadership. It too is something the Class of 1968 ought to get into.
We are the government, you and I. Nobody is going to get us out of this mess except
ourselves.
Why do I keep telling you to get committed, to become involved, not just
to get with it but to get into it? I've visited 22 college university campuses
already this year and I know very well that's just what you intend to do. I am
perfectly aware what this generation of students is like and I'm not confused by
the antics of an immature handful who bang their heads on the floor or threaten
to hold their breath if they can't have their way -- or don't get enough attention.
I'm more impressed with Sen. McCarthy's volunteer workers than I am with his
politics, to be honest, but I'd rather you all went out and worked to elect Democrats
than go out to storm the Pentagon, do bloody battle with the police, or shout down
those with whom you dissent.
You are graduating from college in a Presidential campaign year, and while
this is hidden by a lot of fun and hoopla there are grave and vital choices to be
made next November that will affect your lives very directly. Don't just get with
it -- get into it.
I recently got a look at a very extensive survey made by the Gallup Poll for
the American Heritage Foundation on the attitudes and political opinions of young
Americans aged 21 through 29. Much of it hasn't been published, and it's as full of
surprises and contradictions as youth itself.
First, young people like to think of themselves as "Independents" in
politics -- this category outnumbers both Republicans and Democrats and among college
graduates it amounts to 44 per cent. Young men are more independent than young
women -- I'm speaking strictly of politics -- and, curiously, those traditional
bastions of Democratic and Republican strength, the South and Midwest, turn out the
most independent 20-year-olds.
In this age group two-thirds expressed considerable interest in politics,
and this rose to 80 percent on the college campuses. Forty-one percent said they'd
be willing to volunteer for campaign work and 42 percent would kick in $5 for their
favorite candidate or party -- a lot better on both counts than their affluent and
complacent elders.
But then when it comes to the simplest test of political commitment -- voting
in a Presidential election -- you don't come off so well. Too often, "Independent"
(more)
-9-
really means "Indifferent." When a record 65 percent of the eligible electorate
voted in the cliffhanger Kennedy-Nixon contest of 1960, only 54 percent of those in
their Twenties turned out. In '64 the record was slightly worse.
This year, although it's early in the game, only 48 percent of those in the
21 to 29 bracket are registered to vote in the precinct where they live. For all
their expressed interest, for all their involvement with exciting causes and
for all their ideals, only about 13 million young Americans are actually expected
to cast their ballots this year.
Sure, you get busy, doing your job, starting a home, moving around. But
that's why I keep harping on my theme: Get into it, and stay in.
If you don't like the way it is, do something about it. Maybe you don't
want to make public service your career, or ever run for elective office. But there
are a million ways each of you can upgrade the standards of politics and the quality
of government at every level. You can't all be President of the United States, in
spite of William & Mary's headstart program in this respect, but probably all of you
who want to badly enough to work at it could be president of a school board, or
chairman of a county central committee. And remember, if you don't you can be sure
some idiot will get the job and do everything wrong. Nobody is going to get us out
of this mess except ourselves. We are the government, you and I.
One final word as one who has some experience with minority status. I hope
mine is temporary, but yours is permanent. You are about to join the oldest
minority in the world -- those who have the brains and the disciplines of education
that enable them to give civilization a little bit more than they take from it.
The educational explosion in this country has been far more significant than
any nuclear blast. In 1900 all the institutions of higher learning in America
awarded 27,410 degrees, only 5,237 of them to women. When I received my diploma
at Ann Arbor, the combined Class of 1935 was nearly five times that large, two-fifth:
of them women. You are among an estimated 673,000 seniors graduating this Spring,
another fourfold increase. There still aren't quite enough girls to go around
I think they see to that.
But we Bachelors of Arts and all living Americans who have earned a college
degree still amount to only about 11 percent of the adult population. We are still
in the minority and are likely to remain there all our days. So let's take as our
motto "Build, Man, Build!" instead of "Burn, Baby, Burn."
Let's build on the solid triad of law, learning and liberty -- not for our
ancestors' sakes, but for our descendents. Let's not quench the rebel and the
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-10-
dissenter in us because our fathers were rebels and dissenters and so will our
children be. But let's build instead of burn, work instead of wreck and help
instead of hate.
Unlike any other thing in the Universe, John Steinbeck wrote in The Grapes
of Wrath, "man grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges
ahead of his accomplishments."
You have finished the work of the classroom, you have chosen and sorted out
your concepts, and now comes the time for accomplishment.
Come out ahead, Class of 1968, and God be with you.
###
M Office Copy
FOR RELEASE UPON DELIVERY
5 p.m. Sunday, June 9, 1968
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS BY REP. GERALD R. FORD
(Republican of Michigan)
MINORITY LEADER OF THE U. S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
TO
THE COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY IN THE 275th YEAR
OF ITS CHARTER IN WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
"LAW, LEARNING AND LIBERTY"
President Paschall, faculty and friends, parents and students, and members
of the Class of 1968 of the College of William and Mary at the close of your two
hundred and seventy fifth year, greetings and congratulations.
I am grateful indeed to be invited to this distinguished landmark of higher
education in America, and doubly delighted to have been chosen by a student
committee. In issuing and accepting this honor none of us could foresee the dark
cloud of tragedy which has cast its shadow on the political scene and transformed
today into a national day of mourning. Yet I think Senator Kennedy would have been
the last to want to rob you of any of the joys of this long-awaited day -- not that
my speech will be a joy -- but its message may encourage some of you to take the
same vigorous part in public affairs which both John F. and Robert Kennedy did from
their youth. The red thread of violence and intolerance, with its ugly knots of
assassination and anarchy, which has run through all your student years, will not
be severed by sorrowing nor untangled with tears.
In this serene setting, the evident fulfillment of the Founding Fathers'
dream of domestic tranquillity, it is hard to remember that even college campuses
have not all escaped what one writer calls "the neon glow of the age of comfort and
violence." Therefore it's reassuring to me to know that this historic Sir
Christopher Wren Building, the oldest administration building in the country, which
has been sacked by British Redcoats, commandeered by French officers, burned by
Union cavalrymen and fortified by Federal cannoneers, has never yet fallen to the
student body.
I did note that Commencement Exercises for the Class of 1849 were suspended,
according to the college records, "to give time for the excitement and prejudice
to subside." This simply illustrates that anything Columbia University can do,
William and Mary did a century or so sooner.
What that excitement was all about I'm not sure. In my day the chief causes
of campus commotion were swallowing goldfish, or raiding the women's dormitories.
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I understand the latter situation has been reversed nowadays, with the girls doing
the raiding, and to me this seems to be real progress.
As for the goldfish swallowing -- I believe the record was 87 -- that appears
to have passed quickly, proving only that what you put into your head in college
is more important than what you put into your stomach.
You are probably all thoroughly fed up with observations about the antiquity
of the College of William and Mary, and I shall limit my remarks on your alma
mater's age to this reminder: the first poor people's movement of this country was
across the Atlantic Ocean, across the mountains and the plains and the mountains,
and it has never really ceased.
These poor people, these outcasts, these disadvantaged, these rebels against
the old Establishment, brought very little with them, but what they did bring was
precious and must be preserved. They brought, even as they protested its capricious
abuse, an abiding respect for the rule of law -- they built themselves systems of
orderly self-government even before they erected dry houses.
They brought, also, to this unknown and untamed wilderness, a profound
appreciation of and insistence upon the disciplines of formal education. As they
built crude log stockades they also built schoolrooms, and then opened them to the
children of their savage enemies as well as their own.
Finally, this poor people's march half a world around carried with it a
common commitment to the future, to the half-humanist, half-theological idea of
the perfectability of society, the enlargement of freedom and the innate and unique
worth of individual man.
The College of William and Mary stands pre-eminent in the nurture of these
three transplants to the New World. Some of your students, Thomas Jefferson, John
Marshall, Peyton Randolph and George Wythe, synthesized them into the foundations
of our present political system. Each of you, as you receive your degrees this
evening, represent the latest fruition of this anglo-American legacy of law,
learning and liberty.
We hear a good deal these days about a "generation gap" which is supposed to
cut off effective communication between, say, the Class of 1935 and the Class of
1968. I am not sure this is anything more profound than a new name for a very old
complaint, papa isn't always listening when sonny is talking, and vice versa.
Youth and age -- or for that matter male and female -- have always grumbled that
they weren't really understood by the other, and what a dull life it would be if
we always were!
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You can reach back into the past about 10 times as far as the founding of
William and Mary, for instance, and find in the Proverbs of Solomon page after page
of good advice from father to son, without any hint as to whether the son ever paid
any attention to it.
One proverb that sticks in my mind, however -- and it is honestly the only
thing I can now remember from my own baccalaureate -- goes like this:
"Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom;
"And with all thy getting, get understanding."
Now this is pretty good counsel, coming from Solomon, who was reputed to be
the wisest man of all time -- though I've always wondered how you could say that
about anyone who had 700 wives and 300 playmates in one palace. You have to admit,
though, that such a household does call for a lot of understanding.
I thought I'd see whether Solomon's advice to his son has any relevance for
today's graduating seniors, so I asked one of my younger generation consultants,
who still communicates fairly successfully, what it meant to him:
"Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom;
"And with all thy getting, get understanding."
His answer was not long in coming.
"I guess that means, like, first you get with it; but don't just get with
it -- get into it," is the way he translated it.
Not bad. I doubt that it will replace the King James rendering, or ever go
very big in the Sunday Schools. But I'm going to toss it across Generation Gap
to you today, from Solomon and me, 30 years or 30 centuries give or take a little,
and hope you'll remember it:
"Don't just get with it -- get into it."
I can almost hear some of your fathers and mothers whispering: Now what on
earth is he telling them -- they're already messing into a lot more things than they
ought to be. We always heard that Jerry Ford was a nice, solid type and here he is
talking like that!
And did I hear still another whisper?
Yeah, what have we got to get into -- the Army? Who do you think you're
kidding about law and learning and liberty. We've had too much of the first, just
about enough of the second, and not very much of the third. You and all the
politicians who have been running things ever since we were born have really made
a mess of it. So now you want us to get into it with you.
Well, we are in quite a mess, that's certain. I suppose I could duck this
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by saying I've been in the minority most of the years I've been in Congress, so
don't blame me. That won't do, of course. All adult Americans have to accept
responsibility, at least some responsibility, for the way things are; because as
Theodore Roosevelt put it bluntly:
"The government is us; we are the government, you and I."
Another President, who was also a professor, said it a longer way:
"Government," said Woodrow Wilson, "is merely an attempt to express the
conscience of everybody, the average conscience of the nation, in the rules that
everybody is commanded to obey. That is all it is. If the government is going
faster than the public conscience, it will presently have to pull up; if it is not
going as fast as the public conscience, it will presently have to be whipped up."
The truth of Wilson's definition is nowhere more evident than in the House
of Representatives, which is why serving there is so rewarding. Congress is often
the scapegoat for the sins of American society because Congress is the people in
microcosm. This year and every two years we go home to the people who sent us to
Washington and do what many of you have been doing -- seeing about a job. If they
like the way we've been acting for them and speaking up for them they hire us for
another two-year contract, but if they don't -- that's all, brother. If you don't
get government that serves you best out of this arrangement you at least get the
kind that serves you right, as good as you deserve.
But is this good enough to come to grips with today's challenges?
No, frankly, it is not.
Without wanting to strike a partisan note it's merely a fact of recent history
that my party gained 47 seats in the House two years ago. We needed reinforcements
badly, we rejoiced in the quantity, but even more in the quality of the men and
women who joined our ranks -- many of them not too far from their own college
commencements.
These hard-driving, enthusiastic and tough-minded young legislators not only
brought the insights and initiatives of a new breed of politician to our debates;
already they have left their mark on the Congress. Their extra votes and persistent
pressures helped to create a new code of official conduct for the House, to greatly
improve and strengthen anti-crime and consumer protection laws, to expose waste and
corruption in the poverty and foreign aid programs, to focus attention on urban
needs, to demand long overdue reforms in the machinery of Congress and the Executive
Branch, to mention only a few areas of their activity.
The younger men and women coming up in Washington are not only with it, they
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are in it -- and we are waiting to welcome more. But obviously, it will require
more than better and bolder leadership from government to cope with the problems
that face US. If my generation has learned nothing else in the postgraduate school
of experience it must be that government can do only so much, that simply passing
laws that promise easy solutions and raising taxes to redistribute the great
wealth of this country cannot begin to cope with what are essentially moral and
individual problems; indeed, government action can compound them.
Look at the grave issues which face our nation and each of us today. All
of them, when you think about it seriously, are at the very core moral concerns.
The pros and cons of these questions are fundamentally moral arguments, and perhaps
this explains why debate has become so impassioned and even violent.
Take the war in Vietnam. This is a major national concern, probably the
chief concern of young Americans. Let there be no doubt on one point -- we all,
every one of us, would much rather make love than war. This war is unpopular, but
I doubt very much that the United States has ever had a really popular war -- even
the war with Spain had its aftermath of disillusionment. The year I was graduated
from the University of Michigan was the year Adolf Hitler seized all power in
Germany -- and my generation didn't like the prospect of war disrupting our lives
any more than yours. But the nation met that challenge successfully because
America's moral commitment to the cause of human decency was clear, and we saw it
clearly. We fought that war for you -- even though you didn't yet exist.
The moral dilemma of Vietnam is much more difficult. Its magnitude is
measured by the cruel fact that during just two weeks in May -- even with peace
talks going on -- more young Americans were killed in action in Vietnam than
William and Mary will graduate here today. It has become a cliche to say that we
are bogged down in a war we cannot win and cannot lose, that there is no way out.
This nation has the material strength and human resources to do anything it sets
its mind to; what is lacking is the clear moral commitment of our people to a
course of action that is both reasonable and right, and we have neither now.
The task of leadership is to set such a course; the task of citizens is to
make such a commitment. In one way or another, I say to the Class of 1968 to get
into it. We are the government, you and I. Nobody is going to get us out of this
mess except ourselves.
Take crime and lawlessness, riots and disorders. Already, this looms as a
larger national issue than the war, and already it directly affects more Americans.
Half the women in this country are afraid to walk alone at night in their own
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neighborhoods -- and no wonder, someone is murdered in cold blood every 41 minutes
and a sexual attack occurs every 19 minutes, on the average.
The crime rate is rising eight times as fast as the population. In the time
I've been talking to you there have been six robberies and nine aggravated assaults
somewhere in America. They say in Washington it's so bad even the purse-snatchers
and muggers only walk in pairs.
Every other American now owns a gun, and admits it. More alarming, only last
August only 27% of these gun-owners said they would use their weapon against
another person in the event of a riot; now 67% say they'd shoot under such circum-
stances. Untouched by the pollsters are those who are killing just for kicks, or
from mentally sick motives.
Of course there's a difference between ordinary criminal activity and the
riots and arson and looting that swept more than 125 cities in one week last April.
But the distinction is not so precise as one might think; it was one "ordinary"
crime -- murder -- that triggered the "extra-ordinary" racial explosion that
followed; and that spasm of anarchy and destruction was composed of thousands of
instances of the "ordinary" crimes of burglary, theft, arson, assault and murder.
What all these forms of lawlessness and violence have in common, whether in
a dark alley or in front of newsreel cameras in broad daylight or in the academic
halls of ivy, is the breakdown of the moral values and the boundaries around
behavior by which society justifies and protects itself.
Thus this national concern over crime is also, at the core, a moral matter.
It has been proved time and again that Congress cannot legislate morality; only
in an imperfect sense can it reinforce and define, as Wilson said, the average
conscience of the nation. To say that government is based upon the consent of the
governed is to stop too short; it is not enough that a majority of citizens consent
to a law, and agree to obey it themselves. That same preponderance of the people
must commit themselves to the moral principle that law must be obeyed.
The task of leadership is to translate the national conscience into effective
laws and to enforce those laws firmly but fairly against offenders. The task of
citizens is make their broad commitment to the rule of law clear and unequivocal
and to use the ready electoral, legislative and judicial mechanisms to change such
specific laws as seem to them unwise or unjust. So I say again to the Class of
1968, get into it. We are the government, you and I. Nobody is going to get us
out of this mess except ourselves.
The last great national concern I shall mention today is inflation, and you
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may wonder how I am going to make economics a moral issue. Your professors and
parents are perhaps more troubled by continuously rising prices, rising taxes, rising
interest rates than you have been. The dollar drain has been, for some of you, a
problem best solved by a collect phone call to Daddy. And even when you're holding
down a job in college, if I remember rightly, you don't hang onto any dollar bill
long enough to realize it's losing its value.
But I also suspect a lot of you, in considering which job looks best, have
had occasion to compare the fringe benefits and various pension plans and profit-
sharing systems which today's employers use to attract the ablest graduates and keep
them after they're on the payroll. Maybe you figured your career would be brighter
with one company rather than another, even though the starting salary was a little
less, because of these provisions for your future security and that of your family.
You wouldn't have any doubt that it was a moral issue if, after giving the
best years of your life to that employer, you were told when you reach the age of
50 or 60 that they'd spent the money, your contributions as well, on something else,
so you'd have to get along on half the pension they'd promised you in 1968.
Is it any different when the government does this to everybody? And this
is exactly what government has done, and is still doing. If Aunt Jane gave you a
savings bond -- what do they call them now, Peace Bonds? -- when you graduated
from high school, let me break the bad news -- interest and all, it isn't worth as
much today as what the old dear paid for it in real purchasing power. If it's
wrong for Uncle Sam to take a few years out of a citizen's life at the start of it,
as some young people claim, then it's certainly immoral for Uncle Sam to ruin the
last few years of a citizen's life by stealing half his savings. And that's what
inflation is all about.
The experts warn we're on the brink of the worst worldwide fiscal crisis
since 1931. I remember that as well as you remember your first day in college --
and I don't want it to happen again. But it can happen if we as a nation fail to
put our fiscal house in order, if we hesitate too long to take the nasty economic
medicine every doctor has prescribed. This country is rich and productive beyond
the wildest imaginings of the men who built this college. Our economy can "afford"
anything we need and much that we really don't need, but it cannot give us every-
thing we want and everything we must have and do all these things:at the same time.
We are going to have to set priorities for our national undertakings exactly
as you have had to set priorities for studying for finals, writing term papers,
dating and dancing and demonstrating and whatever else seniors do these days. A
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sound dollar doesn't turn everybody on emotionally like the deadly war in Vietnam
and the crime raging in our cities, but it too demands citizen commitment and
enlightened leadership. It too is something the Class of 1968 ought to get into.
We are the government, you and I. Nobody is going to get us out of this mess except
ourselves.
Why do I keep telling you to get committed, to become involved, not just
to get with it but to get into it? I've visited 22 college university campuses
already this year and I know very well that's just what you intend to do. I am
perfectly aware what this generation of students is like and I'm not confused by
the antics of an immature handful who bang their heads on the floor or threaten
to hold their breath if they can't have their way -- or don't get enough attention.
I'm more impressed with Sen. McCarthy's volunteer workers than I am with his
politics, to be honest, but I'd rather you all went out and worked to elect Democrats
than go out to storm the Pentagon, do bloody battle with the police, or shout down
those with whom you dissent.
You are graduating from college in a Presidential campaign year, and while
this is hidden by a lot of fun and hoopla there are grave and vital choices to be
made next November that will affect your lives very directly. Don't just get with
it -- get into it.
I recently got a look at a very extensive survey made by the Gallup Poll for
the American Heritage Foundation on the attitudes and political opinions of young
Americans aged 21 through 29. Much of it hasn't been published, and it's as full of
surprises and contradictions as youth itself.
First, young people like to think of themselves as "Independents" in
politics -- this category outnumbers both Republicans and Democrats, and among college
graduates it amounts to 44 per cent. Young men are more independent than young
women -- I'm speaking strictly of politics -- and, curiously, those traditional
bastions of Democratic and Republican strength, the South and Midwest, turn out the
most independent 20-year-olds.
In this age group two-thirds expressed considerable interest in politics,
and this rose to 80 percent on the college campuses. Forty-one percent said they'd
be willing to volunteer for campaign work and 42 percent would kick in $5 for their
favorite candidate or party -- a lot better on both counts than their affluent and
complacent elders.
But then when it comes to the simplest test of political commitment -- voting
in a Presidential election -- you don't come off so well. Too often, "Independent"
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really means "Indifferent." When a record 65 percent of the eligible electorate
voted in the cliffhanger Kennedy-Nixon contest of 1960, only 54 percent of those in
their Twenties turned out. In '64 the record was slightly worse.
This year, although it's early in the game, only 48 percent of those in the
21 to 29 bracket are registered to vote in the precinct where they live. For all
their expressed interest, for all their involvement with exciting causes and
for all their ideals, only about 13 million young Americans are actually expected
to cast their ballots this year.
Sure, you get busy, doing your job, starting a home, moving around. But
that's why I keep harping on my theme: Get into it, and stay in.
If you don't like the way it is, do something about it. Maybe you don't
want to make public service your career, or ever run for elective office. But there
are a million ways each of you can upgrade the standards of politics and the quality
of government at every level. You can't all be President of the United States, in
spite of William & Mary's headstart program in this respect, but probably all of you
who want to badly enough to work at it could be president of a school board, or
chairman of a county central committee. And remember, if you don't you can be sure
some idiot will get the job and do everything wrong. Nobody is going to get us out
of this mess except ourselves. We are the government, you and I.
One final word as one who has some experience with minority status. I hope
mine is temporary, but yours is permanent. You are about to join the oldest
minority in the world -- those who have the brains and the disciplines of education
that enable them to give civilization a little bit more than they take from it.
The educational explosion in this country has been far more significant than
any nuclear blast. In 1900 all the institutions of higher learning in America
awarded 27,410 degrees, only 5,237 of them to women. When I received my diploma
at Ann Arbor, the combined Class of 1935 was nearly five times that large, two-fifths
of them women. You are among an estimated 673,000 seniors graduating this Spring,
another fourfold increase. There still aren't quite enough girls to go around --
I think they see to that.
But we Bachelors of Arts and all living Americans who have earned a college
degree still amount to only about 11 percent of the adult population. We are still
in the minority and are likely to remain there all our days. So let's take as our
motto "Build, Man, Build!" instead of "Burn, Baby, Burn."
Let's build on the solid triad of law, learning and liberty -- not for our
ancestors' sakes, but for our descendents. Let's not quench the rebel and the
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dissenter in us because our fathers were rebels and dissenters and so will our
children be. But let's build instead of burn, work instead of wreck and help
instead of hate.
Unlike any other thing in the Universe, John Steinbeck wrote in The Grapes
of Wrath, "man grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges
ahead of his accomplishments."
You have finished the work of the classroom, you have chosen and sorted out
your concepts, and now comes the time for accomplishment.
Come out ahead, Class of 1968, and God be with you.
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