Ask the Scholar
Document scope · 1 page
Scholar
Ask about this object, its catalog metadata, its source description, or the page inventory.
For page-specific OCR and visual context, open one of the page chats.
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
4525778
label
Lions Club of Michigan Convention, May 26, 1962
core
doc
dtoType
document
citationUrl
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
4525778
sourceUrl
contentType
document
title
Lions Club of Michigan Convention, May 26, 1962
citationUrl
collections
Gerald R. Ford Congressional Papers
Speeches
subjects
Political affairs
iiifBase
thumbnailUrl
largeImageUrl
imageCount
1
hasImages
yes
source
import
hasTranscription
no
Source extras
naId
4525778
coverageEndDate
logicalDate
1962-05-31
month
5
year
1962
coverageStartDate
logicalDate
1962-05-01
month
5
year
1962
levelOfDescription
fileUnit
recordType
description
ocrSource
nara-archive
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
document
url
mediaId
80ebc6c25fae9a26
ocrText
The original documents are located in Box D16, folder "Lions Club of Michigan
Convention, May 26, 1962" 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States of America his copyrights in all of his unpublished writings in National Archives collections.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 D16 of the Ford Congressional Papers: Press Secretary and Speech File at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
State Convention: Lions Clubs of Michigan
Address by Rep. Gerald R. Ford, Jr.
May 26, 1962
I'd like to point out today what I believe are some alarming developments in our
national internal life and to suggest the role that you can play in helping our nation
to meet these challenges. As I do so, I hope to avoid either the undue optimism of
a Pollyanna or the unwarranted pessimism of a modern Cassandra.
However, at the start, I should make clear that I am basically an optimist. In
the past few months, I have had some opportunity to travel about our country and, once
again, I was reassured by what I saw. We live in a marvelous country. As one leaves
the hothouse atmosphere of Washington and goes out among the people, one cannot help
but be deeply impressed by the basic strength of our country. That strength is reflected
in our abundant resources, in their dynamic development, and above all, in our energetic,
freedom-loving and God-fearing people.
Over the long haul I have no fear for the future of such a nation and such a
people. I believe they can meet and conquer any problem once they understand the nature
of the problem and its significance.
It is in this area, the area of recognizing our problems, of understanding them
and of choosing the right solutions, that we face our greatest challenge, and it is
here where my basic feeling of optimism is tempered by more than a few nagging doubts.
They are brought on by a number of warning signals in our economic and political life
which we cannot afford to ignore as we move into the decade of the fabulous 60's.
As a prospering, highly-developed nation, we face the same danger which has
confronted every successful nation or civilization since history began. Our danger
is that, as we enjoy our strength and prosperity, we neglect, and thus weaken, those
very institutions and principles which made us strong and prosperous and free. Our
danger lies in complacency, selfishness, ignorance, andirresponsibility.
And, while my message today is that it need not happen here, let us not delude
ourselves. It can happen here. Just because in our lifetime we have seen our nation
move from one plateau to the other, each higher than the last, until we now stand the
greatest nation in the world, let us not think that we cannot fall in fact the
precipice may be closer than we think.
I have often thought that perhaps the first thing which should be taught in
the civics and political science courses in our schools is the story of the decline and
fall of the Roman Empire. The story of a nation which became the undisputed ruler of
-2-
the world and then collapsed so utterly and so completely that it plunged the civilized
world into darkness for centuries, should be studied by every American. We would
learn that just because an economy and a civilization rises to spectacular heights is
no reason it will remain at the pinnacle in perpetuity.
We would learn that stupidity, selfishness, and ignorance on the part of the
population and its rulers can bring on not just a temporary reversal but a collapse
so complete as to wipe out the whole structure with all of its accomplishments. The
Roman Empire collapsed because it became rotten within. It became rotten because the
people and the government failed to preserve those virtues which had led to its strength
and because its citizens refused to apply any restraint to their demands upon the
government. Literally, the Roman Empire tore itself to pieces through the weakness
and demagoguery of its rulers and the enormous burden of expenses they incurred in
meeting the demands of a citizenry which forgot the public interest in its selfish
fight for the fruits of national prosperity.
The comparison between our nation and the Roman Empire is not a perfect one,
but we cannot ignore the obvious warning signals which are flying today.
As a nation, in spite of the heaviest tax burden in its history, we appear to
be constitutionally unable to restrain our expenditures below the level of our income.
It is almost beyond comprehension that this year our federal government cannot pay its
way with abundance and prosperity in our midst. However, deficit financing seems to
be habit forming and even desirable economics among some government officials. We
have balanced our budget (lived within our income as a government) in only five out
of the last 31 years. Needless to say, I am gravely concerned that this fiscal year
will end on June 30th...$7 billion in the red, and responsible forecasts predict a
deficit of over $3 billion in the next twelve months.
Basically, however, we appear unable to reduce our tremendous national debt
which now stands at $298 billion. Interest on that debt alone amounts to over $9
billion dollars each year which is more than our total annual expenditures for every
purpose only 22 years ago. As a result of this profligacy with our national wealth,
coupled with the selfish demands of the more highly organized segments of our economy,
we are fighting a losing battle against inflation. Over the past thirty years the
cost of goods and services have been going up. The value of our money has gone down.
Caught in this vise are those who are least able to protect themselves. Unfortunately,
the victims are our senior citizens who have retired on fixed incomes and the young,
even the unborn, who mus t assume the responsibility of paying the debts of our generation.
These results, however grave though they may be, are but the symptoms of what
-3-
I believe to be a far more serious defect in our national life. I refer to the growing
tendency of our people, encouraged by demagogues whose only principle is a lust for
power, to take the easy way out. We know, each of us in our own hearts and minds, that
the right way is not always the easy way. and that no nation which has consistently taken
the path of least resistance, including the Roman Empire, has ever survived. The easy
way, if it is the wrong way, leads only to the misery of retraced steps or the finality
of disaster. Yet, what are our constantly recurring deficits, what is our huge debt,
what is our inflated currency--if they are not the symptoms of a people and a nation
which have fallen into the habit of taking the easy way out?
The hard way, we know, is to rely on our own individual initiative and self-
reliance for the solution of our problems. The easy way is to pass these problems on
to government. The easy way is for the local units to pass them on to the state govern-
ment and for the state government, in turn, to pass them on to the federal government.
This trend in the last eighteen months has added almost 100,000 more federal employees,
and if Congress enacts several of the major legislative proposals recommended by the
President, federal bureaucracy will increase tremendously.
Too many of our politicians and self-appointed leaders seem to find it politically
expedient to suggest that the solution to any problem should rest on government. And
no politician has found it difficult, or seemingly has lost any votes, by suggesting
that the solution for any state or local problem was the responsibility of the national
government. How simple and easy it is to shift responsibility to government. It is
also much less risky, from the politicians point of view, to remove a problem from
the careful scrutiny of the folks back home and dump it in the legislative pit of the
national congress where its costs, complexities, and waste are hidden in a multitude
of other federal activities.
This is the easy way to avoid responsibility. This is the path which our people
are being encouraged to take by those who think more of the next election than they
do of the next generation.
If you think I overstate the case, examine the proposals that are being advocated
daily for the solution of most of our problems. Pass a federal law, create a new
agency, appropriate billions. Allegedly, that ends the problem.
It is not a question of the need for the program or project. The tragedy is
that we have succumbed to what we have been led to think is the easy way of meeting a
recognized need. The demagogue has no difficulty in selling us on the idea of using
federal funds, which incidentally must be borrowed by a debt-burdened government, in
preference to raising the funds locally, probably through increased taxes. There
-4-
has been spread across our land the idea that there is some magic in federal money and
that its supply is somehow unlimited--a bottomless pit. The demagogue is not concerned
with the true facts of our precarious fiscal position. He is interested only in pro-
viding painless benefits for his greater glory.
The demagogue, and those like him, have also discovered that it is easier to
influence one legislative body, the federal congress, than it is 50 state legislatures
or thousands of local governing bodies. He knows the national government is farther
away from the close scrutiny of the people. He knows he can more easily bring to bear
on the national legislature the heavy influence of powerful pressure groups.
The net result of deluding ourselves into believing that the easy way can safely
be traveled is not alone the financial and fiscal difficulties it inevitably creates.
In the process, we not only weaken our basic economic strength through lavish and
uncontrollable expenditures, but we weaken ourselves as individuals and we weaken our
local and state governments. Weakness and lack of power is the inevitable consequence
of the constant sloughing off of responsibility to someone else. If we choose to make
figureheads of our local governments whose function, under our constitutional form of
government is to help preserve our individual liberties, then we have laid the basis
for the complete concentration of power in the federal government and its inevitable
corruption into absolute tyranny. This concentration of power has one most serious
implication. A government big enough to give us everything we want is a government
big enough to take away from us everything we have.
I have spoken pessimistically of what I have described as the tendency of a
prosperous and successful people to rest on their oars, to avoid difficult decisions,
and to take the easy way out of their difficulties. I have spoken of it in terms of
our fiscal difficulties, in terms of its dangers to our liberties and, specifically,
in terms of its relationship to some of the problems in which I hope you are primarily
interested. I have suggested that a continuation of this trend to its logical conclusion
can only lead to a grave weakening or possible collapse of our nation. I have said
this collapse is possible, and I call to your attention, as another reminder, the work
of the British historian, Toynbee, whose study led him to the conclusion that of the
26 major civilizations in world history, 16 are now dead and buried and the remaining
lo are rapidly losing their character.
But, early in my remarks, I said I was an optimist, that I had great faith in
the basic strength of our nation and our people and that, while it can happen here, it
need not happen here. Whether it does or doesn't happen depends on you and me and
every citizen in this land. It is up to us to determine whether we will continue to
-5-
forever adopt the easy solution, the expedient answer and the least distasteful course
of action, or whether we will pursue the right course, the sound solution and the
intelligent program regardless of how difficult they may first appear to be.
Several centuries ago, the Italian poet, Dante, put it this way:
"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral
crisis, maintain their neutrality." My plea to you today, as leaders in the communities
in our state, is to discard your neutrality in this period of moral crisis and to
enlist inthe fight to preserve our nation and its institutions.
But I would be derelict in my duty if I merely summoned you to battle and left
it at that. Certainly, you are entitled to a knowledge of the nature of the struggle
and to my ideas as to the kind of strategy and tactics which must be employed by those
who choose to fight for the right rather than the easy way.
When I speak of a summons to battle, let me make clear what I mean. I call upon
you, as individual leaders in your professions, in the business community and otherwise,
upon your various organizations to take part with enthusiasm, with courage, and with
determination in the political life of our nation. I do not refer to political theorizing
in an ivory tower or polite discussions on a high plane among yourselves; I refer to
the down-to-earth, back-breaking job of nominating and electing candidates to political
office. I refer to the only kind of political action which has any meaning if we are
to reverse the trend I have described today. I refer to the defeat of those who oppose
everything for which you stand through the victory of those who will work shoulder to
shoulder with you on behalf of the principles which brought greatness to America.
I can give you one word of encouragement at the outset. It is my considered
opinion, as one who has spent some years in American politics, that the principles of
government in which you believe are held by a majority of the American people. I
believe what Thomas McCauley once said, "Nothing is as galling to a people
as
a
paternal or in other words a meddling government, a government which tells them what
to read and see and drink and wear.' If the cause of common-sense conservatism, with
its dynamic urge to preserve the best American institutions, has suffered in recent
years, it has not been because of any change in the basic philosophy of the majority
of Americans. It has come about instead because radicalism and the proponents of the
easy way have done a vastly better job of mobilizing their strength and in hammering
home their something-for-nothing philosophy. You know that is so without my telling
you. The really effective political action groups in this nation are in radical hands.
They are working the soil which produces the most abundant harvest. They are developing
and electing candidates who will promote their viewpoint. These extremists in political
-6-
philosophy have all developed highly-effective political organizations which are pro-
ducing results when the votes are counted. While I violently disagree with their
philosophy and with many of their ruthless methods, I am not one to stand on the
sidelines and criticize their activities. Fundamentally, they are doing what every
citizen should do in a representative republic. They are taking part in the basic
process of representative government. They are electing office-holders who will advance
their views, and the answer to this activity is not simply criticism. The answer to
radical political action is middle-of-the-road or conservative counter-action, and
the sooner we realize that fact the sooner we can restore the balance of power in our
internal political life.
What I am saying, I believe, has particular meaning for each of you. I hold
you in high regard, but I ask you quite frankly whether too many of us and the organi-
zations to which we belong, in the crucial struggle for the preservation of our in-
stitutions, have taken the easy way out by an excessive preoccupation with political
neutrality? That is a question which every individual or group in our nation should
now be asking itself, individually and collectively.
Political success cannot be achieved by well-meaning attempts to influence men
who have already been elected to office. That is the easy way, but, unfortunately
like many other expedient methods, it just doesn't work. The farmer well knows the
finest seed ever produced will not sprout if it is sown in a bed of concrete. Your
efforts to achieve political success cannot be harvested in a legislative body unless
you have prepared the soil in the precincts at home.
What is called for, I sincerely believe, is a decision on your part, both as
individuals and as members of your local groups and associations to renounce political
neutrality during elections and to bring your entire individual and organizational
strength to bear on behalf of candidates who meet your rigid specifications of honor
and outlook.
As individuals, you have the responsibility and duty to become actively engaged
in partisan politics. I am not here as a recruiter for the Republican Party although
I will be glad to take membership applications at the door. What I am saying is that
you cannot, as individuals, expect to achieve concrete political results if you are
unwilling to join and work for the party of your choice. It is only within a party
that you can help to determine party policy, help select candidates for party nomination
and work for their eventual election. It is only within a political party that you
can till and fertilize the soil which will produce the kind of legislators who will,
for example, get some of our basic problems, state and national, out of politics. Many
-7-
like myself in the political arena are disappointed that more of our highly motivated
citizens are not working as actively as they should be in a political party. If this
is true across the land, then I say professionally and business trained people have no
complaint when they find the halls of our legislative bodies slowly filling up with
those whose views are diametrically opposed to their own.
I will go even further and say that, beyond your clear call to duty as individuals,
your professional and business associations, if they hope to be effective in promoting
their programs and polities must take an active interest, as organized groups, in
the nomination and election of legislative candidates. You can discuss and deliberate
issues in local organization meetings and come up with strongly worded resolutions
and yet all of your efforts will go for naught if the group is willing to stand naively
on the sidelines and permit the election of legislators whose views are contrary to
your basic philosophies. The day has long since passed when you can confine your
political efforts to education after the elections have been held. How, I ask you,
can even the most efficient local, state, or national association staff sell your
philosophy to a Congressman who owes his political allegiance to some other group or
organization leader.
I am not suggesting that the local Chamber of Commerce, the PTA, or the groups
representating business or the professions become the wing or adjunct to one of our
political parties. I hope, however, that I have made it crystal clear that I believe
none of us can afford to be neutral in any political contest where one candidate is
for and the other against everything for which we stand. Nor indeed, do I see much
hope for America if our best citizens and our most respected groups stand smugly aside
while the real struggle is being fought and permit victory by default for those whose
policies can lead only to thecollapse of our nation.
The 18th century British statesman, Edmund Burke, said:
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
He also said that "the people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.'
The gravest danger confronting our nation today is that the people delude themselves
into believing there is an easy way out of all their difficulties. The triumph of
such evil can only come about if good men stand idly by. Let it never be said that
you and I were among those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintained our neutrality
and did nothing.
State Convention: Lions Clubs of Michigan
Address by Rep. Gerald R. Ford, Jr.
May 26, 1962
I'd like to point out today what I believe are some alarming developments in our
national internal life and to suggest the role that you can play in helping our nation
to meet these challenges. As I do so, I hope to avoid either the undue optimism of
a Pollyanna or the unwarranted pessimism of a modern Cassandra.
However, at the start, I should make clear that I am basically an optimist. In
the past few months, I have had some opportunity to travel about our country and, once
again, I was reassured by what I saw. We live in a marvelous country. As one leaves
the hothouse atmosphere of Washington and goes out among the people, one cannot help
but be deeply impressed by the basic strength of our country. That strength is reflected
in our abundant resources, in their dynamic development, and above all, in our energetic,
freedom-loving and God-fearing people.
Over the long haul I have no fear for the future of such a nation and such a
people. I believe they can meet and conquer any problem once they understand the nature
of the problem and its significance.
It is in this area, the area of recognizing our problems, of understanding them
and of choosing the right solutions, that we face our greatest challenge, and it is
here where my basic feeling of optimism is tempered by more than a few nagging doubts.
They are brought on by a number of warning signals in our economic and political life
which we cannot afford to ignore as we move into the decade of the fabulous 60's.
As a prospering, highly-developed nation, we face the same danger which has
confronted every successful nation or civilization since history began. Our danger
is that, as we enjoy our strength and prosperity, we neglect, and thus weaken, those
very institutions and principles which made us strong and prosperous and free. Our
danger lies in complacency, selfishness, ignorance, andirresponsibility.
And, while my message today is that it need not happen here, let us not delude
ourselves. It can happen here. Just because in our lifetime we have seen our nation
move from one plateau to the other, each higher than the last, until we now stand the
greatest nation in the world, let us not think that we cannot fall--in fact the
precipice may be closer than we think.
I have often thought that perhaps the first thing which should be taught in
the civics and political science courses in our schools is the story of the decline and
fall of the Roman Empire. The story of a nation which became the undisputed ruler of
-2-
the world and then collapsed so utterly and so completely that it plunged the civilized
world into darkness for centuries, should be studied by every American. We would
learn that just because an economy and a civilization rises to spectacular heights is
no reason it will remain at the pinnacle in perpetuity.
We would learn that stupidity, selfishness, and ignorance on the part of the
population and its rulers can bring on not just a temporary reversal but a collapse
so complete as to wipe out the whole structure with all of its accomplishments. The
Roman Empire collapsed because it became rotten within. It became rotten because the
people and the government failed to preserve those virtues which had led to its strength
and because its citizens refused to apply any restraint to their demands upon the
government. Literally, the Roman Empire tore itself to pieces through the weakness
and demagoguery of its rulers and the enormous burden of expenses they incurred in
meeting the demands of a citizenry which forgot the public interest in its selfish
fight for the fruits of national prosperity.
The comparison between our nation and the Roman Empire is not a perfect one,
but we cannot ignore the obvious warning signals which are flying today.
As a nation, in spite of the heaviest tax burden in its history, we appear to
be constitutionally unable to restrain our expenditures below the level of our income.
It is almost beyond comprehension that this year our federal government cannot pay its
way with abundance and prosperity in our midst. However, deficit financing seems to
be habit forming and even desirable economics among some government officials. We
have balanced our budget (lived within our income as a government) in only five out
of the last 31 years. Needless to say, I am gravely concerned that this fiscal year
will end on June 30th $7 billion in the red, and responsible forecasts predict a
deficit of over $3 billion in the next twelve months.
Basically, however, we appear unable to reduce our tremendous national debt
which now stands at $298 billion. Interest on that debt alone amounts to over $9
billion dollars each year which is more than our total annual expenditures for every
purpose only 22 years ago. As a result of this profligacy with our national wealth,
coupled with the selfish demands of the more highly organized segments of our economy,
we are fighting a losing battle against inflation. Over the past thirty years the
cost of goods and services have been going up. The value of our money has gone down.
Caught in this vise are those who are least able to protect themselves. Unfortunately,
the victims are our senior citizens who have retired on fixed incomes and the young,
even the unborn, who mus assume the responsibility of paying the debts of our generation.
These results, however grave though they may be, are but the symptoms of what
-3-
I believe to be a far more serious defect in our national life. I refer to the growing
tendency of our people, encouraged by demagogues whose only principle is a lust for
power, to take the easy way out. We know, each of us in our own hearts and minds, that
the right way is not always the easy way. and that no nation which has consistently taken
the path of least resistance, including the Roman Empire, has ever survived. The easy
way, if it is the wrong way, leads only to the misery of retraced steps or the finality
of disaster. Yet, what are our constantly recurring deficits, what is our huge debt,
what is our inflated currency--if they are not the symptoms of a people and a nation
which have fallen into the habit of taking the easy way out?
The hard way, we know, is to rely on our own individual initiative and self-
reliance for the solution of our problems. The easy way is to pass these problems on
to government. The easy way is for the local units to pass them on to the state govern-
ment and for the state government, in turn, to pass them on to the federal government.
This trend in the last eighteen months has added almost 100,000 more federal employees,
and if Congress enacts several of the major legislative proposals recommended by the
President, federal bureaucracy will increase tremendously.
Too many of our politicians and self-appointed leaders seem to find it politically
expedient to suggest that the solution to any problem should rest on government. And
no politician has found it difficult, or seemingly has lost any votes, by suggesting
that the solution for any state or local problem was the responsibility of the national
government. How simple and easy it is to shift responsibility to government. It is
also much less risky, from the politicians point of view, to remove a problem from
the careful scrutiny of the folks back home and dump it in the legislative pit of the
national congress where its costs, complexities, and waste are hidden in a multitude
of other federal activities.
This is the easy way to avoid responsibility. This is the path which our people
are being encouraged to take by those who think more of the next election than they
do of the next generation.
If you think I overstate the case, examine the proposals that are being advocated
daily for the solution of most of our problems. Pass a federal law, create a new
agency, appropriate billions. Allegedly, that ends the problem.
It is not a question of the need for the program or project. The tragedy is
that we have succumbed to what we have been led to think is the easy way of meeting a
recognized need. The demagogue has no difficulty in selling us on the idea of using
federal funds, which incidentally must be borrowed by a debt-burdened government, in
preference to raising the funds locally, probably through increased taxes. There
-4-
has been spread across our land the idea that there is some magic in federal money and
that its supply is somehow unlimited- a bottomless pit. The demagogue is not concerned
with the true facts of our precarious fiscal position. He is interested only in pro-
viding painless benefits for his greater glory.
The demagogue, and those like him, have also discovered that it is easier to
influence one legislative body, the federal congress, than it is 50 state legislatures
or thousands of local governing bodies. He knows the national government is farther
away from the close scrutiny of the people. He knows he can more easily bring to bear
on the national legislature the heavy influence of powerful pressure groups.
The net result of deluding ourselves into believing that the easy way can safely
be traveled is not alone the financial and fiscal difficulties it inevitably creates.
In the process, we not only weaken our basic economic strength through lavish and
uncontrollable expenditures, but we weaken ourselves as individuals and we weaken our
local and state governments. Weakness and lack of power is the inevitable consequence
of the constant sloughing off of responsibility to someone else. If we choose to make
figureheads of our local governments whose function, under our constitutional form of
government is to help preserve our individual liberties, then we have laid the basis
for the complete concentration of power in the federal government and its inevitable
corruption into absolute tyranny. This concentration of power has one most serious
implication. A government big enough to give us everything we want is a government
big enough to take away from us everything we have.
I have spoken pessimistically of what I have described as the tendency of a
prosperous and successful people to rest on their oars, to avoid difficult decisions,
and to take the easy way out of their difficulties. I have spoken of it in terms of
our fiscal difficulties, in terms of its dangers to our liberties and, specifically,
in terms of its relationship to some of the problems in which I hope you are primarily
interested. I have suggested that a continuation of this trend to its logical conclusion
can only lead to a grave weakening or possible collapse of our nation. I have said
this collapse is possible, and I call to your attention, as another reminder, the work
of the British historian, Toynbee, whose study led him to the conclusion that of the
26 major civilizations in world history, 16 are now dead and buried and the remaining
lo are rapidly losing their character.
But, early in my remarks, I said I was an optimist, that I had great faith in
the basic strength of our nation and our people and that, while it can happen here, it
need not happen here. Whether it does or doesn't happen depends on you and me and
every citizen in this land. It is up to us to determine whether we will continue to
-5-
forever adopt the easy solution, the expedient answer and the least distasteful course
of action, or whether we will pursue the right course, the sound solution and the
intelligent program regardless of how difficult they may first appear to be.
Several centuries ago, the Italian poet, Dante, put it this way:
"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral
crisis, maintain their neutrality." My plea to you today, as leaders in the communities
in our state, is to discard your neutrality in this period of moral crisis and to
enlist inthe fight to preserve our nation and its institutions.
But I would be derelict in my duty if I merely summoned you to battle and left
it at that. Certainly, you are entitled to a knowledge of the nature of the struggle
and to my ideas as to the kind of strategy and tactics which must be employed by those
who choose to fight for the right rather than the easy way.
When I speak of a summons to battle, let me make clear what I mean. I call upon
you, as individual leaders in your professions, in the business community and otherwise,
upon your various organizations to take part with enthusiasm, with courage, and with
determination in the political life of our nation. I do not refer to political theorizing
in an ivory tower or polite discussions on a high plane among yourselves; I refer to
the down-to-earth, back-breaking job of nominating and electing candidates to political
office. I refer to the only kind of political action which has any meaning if we are
to reverse the trend I have described today. I refer to the defeat of those who oppose
everything for which you stand through the victory of those who will work shoulder to
shoulder with you on behalf of the principles which brought greatness to America.
I can give you one word of encouragement at the outset. It is my considered
opinion, as one who has spent some years in American politics, that the principles of
government in which you believe are held by a majority of the American people. I
believe what Thomas McCauley once said, "Nothing is as galling to a people
as
a
paternal or in other words a meddling government, a government which tells them what
to read and see and drink and wear. " If the cause of common-sense conservatism, with
its dynamic urge to preserve the best American institutions, has suffered in recent
years, it has not been because of any change in the basic philosophy of the majority
of Americans. It has come about instead because radicalism and the proponents of the
easy way have done a vastly better job of mobilizing their strength and in hammering
home their something-for-nothing philosophy. You know that is so without my telling
you. The really effective political action groups in this nation are in radical hands.
They are working the soil which produces the most abundant harvest. They are developing
and electing candidates who will promote their viewpoint. These extremists in political
-6-
philosophy have all developed highly-effective political organizations which are pro-
ducing results when the votes are counted. While I violently disagree with their
philosophy and with many of their ruthless methods, I am not one to stand on the
sidelines and criticize their activities. Fundamentally, they are doing what every
citizen should do in a representative republic. They are taking part in the basic
process of representative government. They are electing office-holders who will advance
their views, and the answer to this activity is not simply criticism. The answer to
radical political action is middle-of-the-road or conservative counter-action, and
the sooner we realize that fact the sooner we can restore the balance of power in our
internal political life.
What I am saying, I believe, has particular meaning for each of you. I hold
you in high regard, but I ask you quite frankly whether too many of us and the organi-
zations to which we belong, in the crucial struggle for the preservation of our in-
stitutions, have taken the easy way out by an excessive preoccupation with political
neutrality That is a question which every individual or group in our nation should
Insula
now be asking itself, individually and collectively.
Political success cannot be achieved by well-meaning attempts to influence men
who have already been elected to office. That is the easy way, but, unfortunately
like many other expedient methods, it just doesn't work. The farmer well knows the
finest seed ever produced will not sprout if it is sown in a bed of concrete. Your
efforts to achieve political success cannot be harvested in a legislative body unless
you have prepared the soil in the precincts at home.
What is called for, I sincerely believe, is a decision by your part, both as
more
&
move
amerans
individuals and as members of your local groups and associations to renounce political
neutrality during elections and to bring your entire individual effort and organizational
their
them
trength to bear on behalf of candidates who meet your rigid specifications of honor
and outlook.
As individuals, you have the responsibility and duty to become actively engaged
in partisan politics. I am not here as a recruiter for the Republican Party although
I will be glad to take membership applications at the door. What I am saying is that
you cannot, as individuals, expect to achieve concrete political results if you are
unwilling to join and work for the party of your choice. It is only within a party
that you can help to determine party policy, help select candidates for party nomination
and work for their eventual election. It is only within a political party that you
can till and fertilize the soil which will produce the kind of legislators who will,
patty
for example, get some of our basic problems, state and national, out of politics. Many
-7-
like myself in the political arena are disappointed that more of our highly motivated
citizens are not working as actively as they should be in a political party.
If
this
stop
is true across the land, then I say professionally and business trained people have no
complaint when they find the halls of our legislative bodies slowly filling up with
those whose views are diametrically opposed to their own.
I will go even further and say that, beyond your clear call to duty as individuals,
your professional and business associations, if they hope to be effective in promoting
their programs and polities must take an active interest, as organized groups, in
the nomination and election of legislative candidates. You can discuss and deliberate
issues in local organization meetings and come up with strongly worded resolutions
and yet all of your efforts will go for naught if the group is willing to stand naively
on the sidelines and permit the election of legislators whose views are contrary to
your basic philosophies. The day has long since passed when you can confine your
political efforts to education after the elections have been held. How, I ask you,
can even the most efficient local, state, or national association staff sell your
philosophy to a Congressman who owes his political allegiance to some other group or
organization leader.
I am not suggesting that the local Chamber of Commerce, the PTA, or the groups
representating business or the professions become the wing or adjunct to one of our
political parties. I hope, however, that I have made it crystal clear that I believe
none of us can afford to be neutral in any political contest where one candidate is
for and the other against everything for which we stand. Nor indeed, do I see much
hope for America if our best citizens and our most respected groups stand smugly aside
while the real struggle is being fought and permit victory by default for those whose
policies can lead only to thecollapse of our nation.
The 18th century British statesman, Edmund Burke, said:
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
He also said that "the people never give up their liberties but under some delusion. "
The gravest danger confronting our nation today is that the people delude themselves
into believing there is an easy way out of all their difficulties. The triumph of
such evil can only come about if good men stand idly by. Let it never be said that
you and I were among those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintained our neutrality
and did nothing.
State Convention: Lions Clubs of Michigan
Address by Rep. Gerald R. Ford, Jr.
May 26, 1962
I'd like to point out today what I believe are some alarming developments in our
national internal life and to suggest the role that you can play in helping our nation
to meet these challenges. As I do so, I hope to avoid either the undue optimism of
a Pollyanna or the unwarranted pessimism of a modern Cassandra.
However, at the start, I should make clear that I am basically an optimist. In
the past few months, I have had some opportunity to travel about our country and, once
again, I was reassured by what I saw. We live in a marvelous country. As one leaves
the hothouse atmosphere of Washington and goes out among the people, one cannot help
but be deeply impressed by the basic strength of our country. That strength is reflected
in our abundant resources, in their dynamic development, and above all, in our energetic,
freedom-loving and God-fearing people.
Over the long haul I have no fear for the future of such a nation and such a
people. I believe they can meet and conquer any problem once they understand the nature
of the problem and its significance.
It is in this area, the area of recognizing our problems, of understanding them
and of choosing the right solutions, that we face our greatest challenge, and it is
here where my basic feeling of optimism is tempered by more than a few nagging doubts.
They are brought on by a number of warning signals in our economic and political life
which we cannot afford to ignore as we move into the decade of the fabulous 60's.
As a prospering, highly-developed nation, we face the same danger which has
confronted every successful nation or civilization since history began. Our danger
is that, as we enjoy our strength and prosperity, we neglect, and thus weaken, those
very institutions and principles which made us strong and prosperous and free. Our
danger lies in complacency, selfishness, ignorance, andirresponsibility.
And, while my message today is that it need not happen here, let us not delude
ourselves. It can happen here. Just because in our lifetime we have seen our nation
move from one plateau to the other, each higher than the last, until we now stand the
greatest nation in the world, let us not think that we cannot fall--in fact the
precipice may be closer than we think.
I have often thought that perhaps the first thing which should be taught in
the civics and political science courses in our schools is the story of the decline and
fall of the Roman Empire. The story of a nation which became the undisputed ruler of
-2-
the world and then collapsed so utterly and so completely that it plunged the civilized
world into darkness for centuries, should be studied by every American. We would
learn that just because an economy and a civilization rises to spectacular heights is
no reason it will remain at the pinnacle in perpetuity.
We would learn that stupidity, selfishness, and ignorance on the part of the
population and its rulers can bring on not just a temporary reversal but a collapse
so complete as to wipe out the whole structure with all of its accomplishments. The
Roman Empire collapsed because it became rotten within. It became rotten because the
people and the government failed to preserve those virtues which had led to its strength
and because its citizens refused to apply any restraint to their demands upon the
government. Literally, the Roman Empire tore itself to pieces through the weakness
and demagoguery of its rulers and the enormous burden of expenses they incurred in
meeting the demands of a citizenry which forgot the public interest in its selfish
fight for the fruits of national prosperity.
The comparison between our nation and the Roman Empire is not a perfect one,
but we cannot ignore the obvious warning signals which are flying today.
As a nation, in spite of the heaviest tax burden in its history, we appear to
be constitutionally unable to restrain our expenditures below the level of our income.
It is almost beyond comprehension that this year our federal government cannot pay its
way with abundance and prosperity in our midst. However, deficit financing seems to
be habit forming and even desirable economics among some government officials. We
have balanced our budget (lived within our income as a government) in only five out
of the last 31 years. Needless to say, I am gravely concerned that this fiscal year
will end on June 30th.. $7 billion in the red, and responsible forecasts predict a
deficit of over $3 billion in the next twelve months.
Basically, however, we appear unable to reduce our tremendous national debt
which now stands at $298 billion. Interest on that debt alone amounts to over $9
billion dollars each year which is more than our total annual expenditures for every
purpose only 22 years ago. As a result of this profligacy with our national wealth,
coupled with the selfish demands of the more highly organized segments of our economy,
we are fighting a losing battle against inflation. Over the past thirty years the
cost of goods and services have been going up. The value of our money has gone down.
Caught in this vise are those who are least able to protect themselves. Unfortunately,
the victims are our senior citizens who have retired on fixed incomes and the young,
even the unborn, who must assume the responsibility of paying the debts of our generation.
These results, however grave though they may be, are but the symptoms of what
-3-
I believe to be a far more serious defect in our national life. I refer to the growing
tendency of our people, encouraged by demagogues whose only principle is a lust for
power, to take the easy way out. We know, each of us in our own hearts and minds, that
the right way is not always the easy way. and that no nation which has consistently taken
the path of least resistance, including the Roman Empire, has ever survived. The easy
way, if it is the wrong way, leads only to the misery of retraced steps or the finality
of disaster. Yet, what are our constantly recurring deficits, what is our huge debt,
what is our inflated currency--if they are not the symptoms of a people and a nation
which have fallen into the habit of taking the easy way out?
The hard way, we know, is to rely on our own individual initiative and self-
reliance for the solution of our problems. The easy way is to pass these problems on
to government. The easy way is for the local units to pass them on to the state govern-
ment and for the state government, in turn, to pass them on to the federal government.
This trend in the last eighteen months has added almost 100,000 more federal employees,
and if Congress enacts several of the major legislative proposals recommended by the
President, federal bureaucracy will increase tremendously.
Too many of our politicians and self-appointed leaders seem to find it politically
expedient to suggest that the solution to any problem should rest on government. And
no politician has found it difficult, or seemingly has lost any votes, by suggesting
that the solution for any state or local problem was the responsibility of the national
government. How simple and easy it is to shift responsibility to government. It is
also much less risky, from the politicians point of view, to remove a problem from
the careful scrutiny of the folks back home and dump it in the legislative pit of the
national congress where its costs, complexities, and waste are hidden in a multitude
of other federal activities.
This is the easy way to avoid responsibility. This is the path which our people
are being encouraged to take by those who think more of the next election than they
do of the next generation.
If you think I overstate the case, examine the proposals that are being advocated
daily for the solution of most of our problems. Pass a federal law, create a new
agency, appropriate billions. Allegedly, that ends the problem.
It is not a question of the need for the program or project. The tragedy is
that we have succumbed to what we have been led to think is the easy way of meeting a
recognized need. The demagogue has no difficulty in selling us on the idea of using
federal funds, which incidentally must be borrowed by a debt-burdened government, in
preference to raising the funds locally, probably through increased taxes. There
-4-
has been spread across our land the idea that there is some magic in federal money and
that its supply is somehow unlimited-- a bottomless pit. The demagogue is not concerned
with the true facts of our precarious fiscal position. He is interested only in pro-
viding painless benefits for his greater glory.
The demagogue, and those like him, have also discovered that it is easier to
influence one legislative body, the federal congress, than it is 50 state legislatures
or thousands of local governing bodies. He knows the national government is farther
away from the close scrutiny of the people. He knows he can more easily bring to bear
on the national legislature the heavy influence of powerful pressure groups.
The net result of deluding ourselves into believing that the easy way can safely
be traveled is not alone the financial and fiscal difficulties it inevitably creates.
In the process, we not only weaken our basic economic strength through lavish and
uncontrollable expenditures, but we weaken ourselves as individuals and we weaken our
local and state governments. Weakness and lack of power is the inevitable consequence
of the constant sloughing off of responsibility to someone else. If we choose to make
figureheads of our local governments whose function, under our constitutional form of
government is to help preserve our individual liberties, then we have laid the basis
for the complete concentration of power in the federal government and its Anevitable
corruption into absolute tyranny. This concentration of power has one most serious
implication. A government big enough to give us everything we want is a government
big enough to take from us everything we have.
had
I have spoken pessimistically of what I have described as the tendency of a
prosperous and successful people to rest on their oars, to avoid difficult decisions,
and to take the easy way out of their difficulties. I have spoken of it in terms of
our fiscal difficulties, in terms of its dangers to our liberties and, specifically,
in terms of its relationship to some of the problems in which I hope you are primarily
interested. I have suggested that a continuation of this trend to its logical conclusion
can only lead to a grave weakening or possible collapse of our nation. I have said
this collapse is possible, and I call to your attention, as another reminder, the work
of the British historian, Toynbee, whose study led him to the conclusion that of the
26 major civilizations in world history, 16 are now dead and buried and the remaining
lo are rapidly losing their character.
But, early in my remarks, I said I was an optimist, that I had great faith in
the basic strength of our nation and our people and that, while it can happen here, it
need not happen here. Whether it does or doesn't happen depends on you and me and
every citizen in this land. It is up to us to determine whether we will continue to
-5-
forever adopt the easy solution, the expedient answer and the least distasteful course
of action, or whether we will pursue the right course, the sound solution and the
intelligent program regardless of how difficult they may first appear to be.
Several centuries ago, the Italian poet, Dante, put it this way:
"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral
crisis, maintain their neutrality.
My plea to you today, as leaders in the communities
in our state, is to discard your neutrality in this period of moral crisis and to
enlist inthe fight to preserve our nation and its institutions.
But I would be derelict in my duty if I merely summoned you to battle and left
it at that. Certainly, you are entitled to a knowledge of the nature of the struggle
and to my ideas as to the kind of strategy and tactics which must be employed by those
who choose to fight for the right rather than the easy way.
When I speak of a summons to battle, let me make clear what I mean. I call upon
you, as individual leaders in your professions, in the business community and otherwise,
upon your various organizations to take part with enthusiasm, with courage, and with
determination in the political life of our nation. I do not refer to political theorizing
in an ivory tower or polite discussions on a high plane among yourselves; I refer to
the down-to-earth, back-breaking job of nominating and electing candidates to political
office. I refer to the only kind of political action which has any meaning if we are
to reverse the trend I have described today. I refer to the defeat of those who oppose
everything for which you stand through the victory of those who will work shoulder to
shoulder with you on behalf of the principles which brought greatness to America.
I can give you one word of encouragement at the outset. It is my considered
opinion, as one who has spent some years in American politics, that the principles of
government in which you believe are held by a majority of the American people. I
believe what Thomas McCauley once said,
"Nothing is as galling to a people
as
a
paternal or in other words a meddling government, a government which tells them what
to read and see and drink and wear
If the cause of common-sense conservatism, with
its dynamic urge to preserve the best American institutions, has suffered in recent
years, it has not been because of any change in the basic philosophy of the majority
of Americans. It has come about instead because radicalism and the proponents of the
easy way have done a vastly better job of mobilizing their strength and in hammering
home their something-for-nothing philosophy. You know that is so without my telling
you. The really effective political action groups in this nation are in radical hands.
They are working the soil which produces the most abundant harvest. They are developing
and electing candidates who will promote their viewpoint. These extremists in political
-6-
philosophy have all developed highly-effective political organizations which are pro-
ducing results when the votes are counted. While I violently disagree with their
philosophy and with many of their ruthless methods, I am not one to stand on the
sidelines and criticize their activities. Fundamentally, they are doing what every
citizen should do in a representative republic. They are taking part in the basic
process of representative government. They are electing office-holders who will advance
their views, and the answer to this activity is not simply criticism. The answer to
radical political action is middle-of-the-road or conservative counter-action, and
the sooner we realize that fact the sooner we can restore the balance of power in our
internal political life.
What I am saying, I believe, has particular meaning for each of you. I hold
you in high regard, but I ask you quite frankly whether too many of us and the organi-
zations to which we belong, in the crucial struggle for the preservation of our in-
stitutions, have taken the easy way out by an excessive preoccupation with political
neutrality? That is a question which every individual or group in our nation should
now be asking itself, individually and collectively.
Political success cannot be achieved by well-meaning attempts to influence men
who have already been elected to office. That is the easy way, but, unfortunately
like many other expedient methods, it just doesn't work. The farmer well knows the
finest seed ever produced will not sprout if it is sown in a bed of concrete. Your
efforts to achieve political success cannot be harvested in a legislative body unless
you have prepared the soil in the precincts at home.
What is called for, I sincerely believe, is a decision on your part, both as
individuals and as members of your local groups and associations to renounce political
neutrality during elections and to bring your entire individual and organizational
strength to bear on behalf of candidates who meet your rigid specifications of honor
and outlook.
As individuals, you have the responsibility and duty to become actively engaged
in partisan politics. I am not here as a recruiter for the Republican Party although
I will be glad to take membership applications at the door. What I am saying is that
you cannot, as individuals, expect to achieve concrete political results if you are
unwilling to join and work for the party of your choice. It is only within a party
that you can help to determine party policy, help select candidates for party nomination
and work for their eventual election. It is only within a political party that you
can till and fertilize the soil which will produce the kind of legislators who will,
for example, get some of our basic problems, state and national, out of politics. Many
-7-
like myself in the political arena are disappointed that more of our highly motivated
citizens are not working as actively as they should be in a political party. If this
is true across the land, then I say professionally and business trained people have no
complaint when they find the halls of our legislative bodies slowly filling up with
those whose views are diametrically opposed to their own.
I will go even further and say that, beyond your clear call to duty as individuals,
your professional and business associations, if they hope to be effective in promoting
their programs and polities must take an active interest, as organized groups, in
the nomination and election of legislative candidates. You can discuss and deliberate
issues in local organization meetings and come up with strongly worded resolutions
and yet all of your efforts will go for naught if the group is willing to stand naively
on the sidelines and permit the election of legislators whose views are contrary to
your basic philosophies. The day has long since passed when you can confine your
political efforts to education after the elections have been held. How, I ask you,
can even the most efficient local, state, or national association staff sell your
philosophy to a Congressman who owes his political allegiance to some other group or
organization leader.
I am not suggesting that the local Chamber of Commerce, the PTA, or the groups
representating business or the professions become the wing or adjunct to one of our
political parties. I hope, however, that I have made it crystal clear that I believe
none of us can afford to be neutral in any political contest where one candidate is
for and the other against everything for which we stand. Nor indeed, do I see much
hope for America if our best citizens and our most respected groups stand smugly aside
while the real struggle is being fought and permit victory by default for those whose
policies can lead only to thecollapse of our nation.