To win this War on Poverty we will need to practice all three of the fundamental virtues to which you are dedicated: initiative, versatility, and perseverance; above all, perseverance.
President Johnson has promised that he will persevere. In his message on poverty, he told Congress--"This is a total commitment, by this President, and this Congress, and this Nation, to pursue victory over the most ancient of mankind’s enemies.”
And while I am speaking of these virtues--to show you how kindly your hospitality has made me feel tonight--I can even find some virtue in the activity boiling at this moment in San Francisco.
There is some virtue--there is a ray of hope in the Republican platform. There is one affirmative point that sounds like the Camp Ondessonk statement of purpose. The Republican platform pledges:
“Enlargement of employment opportunities for urban and rural citizens, with emphasis on training programs to equip them with needed skills.”
That is exactly what Title One of the Economic Opportunity Act does. Title One will provide part-time work for 400,000 urban and rural citizens with emphasis on training to equip them with needed skills.
The Republican platform pledges further:
“Republican sponsorship of practical Federal-state-local programs which will effectively treat the needs of the poor, while resisting direct Federal handouts that erode away individual self-reliance and self-respect and perpetuate dependency.”
Again, this is exactly that what Title Two of the President’s program proposes to do. Title Two is based on local programs to fight poverty--programs created by local leadership and controlled by local citizens. If Belleville has a program you will manage it. There will be no direct Federal handouts. Raymond Saulnier, an economist who has worked closely with Senator Goldwater and was on - President Eisenhower’s Council of Economic Advisers, told me personally that the poverty program is exactly the way we should try to overcome structural unemployment in America.
At another place the Republican platform says:
“In all such programs where Federal initiative is properly involved, to relieve or prevent misfortune or meet over-powering need, it will be the Republican way to move promptly and energetically and whenever possible to provide assistance of a kind enabling the individual to gain or regain the capability to make his own way to have a fair chance to achieve his own goals.”
This language encourages me. I feel as I felt last week when some Republican Senators voted for the Economic Opportunity Act--men like Senator Prouty, a prudent Vermonter in the Calvin Coolidge tradition, like Senator Jordan of Idaho, and Jack Javits of New York.
We welcome all twentieth century Republicans. We hope they will join all Americans in a bi-partisan national crusade against poverty. Javits, Jordan, and Prouty voted their convictions last week.
But now the eyes of all will be on one Senator--the Senator from Arizona. Will he join Senators Prouty, Jordan, and Javits and prove that the language in the Republican platform will be followed by action? His action?
Next Thursday, the Senate will vote Yes or No on the President’s War on Poverty. That program was designed to bring about precisely the “enlargement of employment opportunities” that the Republican platform promises.
So every Republican in Congress, and above all Senator Goldwater, will now face the acid test. By voting for or against the Economic Opportunity Act, Republicans will show whether the broad statements in their platform mean anything. The bill will be fully debated, but the moment will come--and it is not far off--when Senator Goldwater and his colleagues will have to vote one way or the other, As President Johnson says, “It is a time for action.”
This is the season for partisanship. Some may not consider it fashionable to talk about patriotism. But that is what is at stake here. Since we have a Democratic President, this is naturally a bill sponsored by Democrats. But the War on Poverty goes far beyond party: It goes to the heart of the American dream and to the future of this great Republic. For this is truly America’s holy war!
A vote against the War on Poverty is not a vote against Lyndon Johnson. It is not a vote against the Democratic Party. It is a vote against the American people--against the poor and the rich--and against the children of America. One-third of the poor are children: they were born poor. They are the ones who most need the opportunities this bill will open.
No one claims that this program will solve everything. But it is a practical beginning. There are no simple answers to poverty. The problems are deep and difficult to resolve. For ours is a complex and frustrating time in the history of man. John Kennedy said here in Belleville four years ago: “Time and events have placed a heavy burden upon us all. It would be nice to turn those burdens over to some other country and some other people, but we have had them placed on us, and I do not regret it.”
Most of us have moments of irritation when we do regret these burdens of leadership at home and in the world. We would like to forget poverty. But we must continue, in the spirit of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.
Many of the scenes from the film “How the West Was Won” were taken at this camp. That is appropriate because the West was won the way the world will be won: Despite all our films of two-gun cowboys, our West was not really won by fast draws and in gunsmoke. In fact, the West was won when the violence was subdued, when law was established, when reason became the rule. Most of all, the West was won by pioneers seeking new opportunity, who went to farm, and to build, and to teach. That is how Peace Corps Volunteers are working in the world.
Recently, a Peace Corps Volunteer entered a small African village. A little boy pointed to him and said to his mother, “Look, there’s a white man.” “No, son,” she said, “that’s not a white man, that’s a Peace Corps Volunteer.”
We are working for the day when no one anywhere will say: “Look, there is a white man,” or “Look, there is a colored man,” or “Look, there is a poor man.”
We will see the day when they say only, “Look, there’s an American.”
