Archive for August, 2004

The Political Education of Zell Miller

Sunday, August 29th, 2004

I’m looking back at what usenet users thought of Zell Miller through the past fifteen years, and what news articles they deemed relevant.

Start with a 1992 Political Profile of Georgia politics, which Zell Miller dominates.

Jump to Zell Miller’s 1992 Democratic National Convention Keynote Speech. Keep this in hand when he makes his 2004 Republican National Convention Keynote Speech — the most conservative speaker in primetime.

And An Analysis of how he won re-election in the uber- Republican year of 1994.

Any signs of Democratic discontent toward him? Republicans embracing him? Unexplainable flip flops? Democrats loving him? Republicans hating him? And… why is he so thin-skinned about his southernness?

Leave aside the fury that greeted him after signing into law what now looks incredibly anachronistic, from 1996: a bill that would bar a person from linking websites without permission, and require your email address have your name in it. For the curious, my name really is Dhowiec Andisestablish.

His great contribution, and his legislative legacy that Bill Clinton ran with, is “The Hope Scholarship”. Beyond that, he expanded pre-kindergarten education in Georgia and brought in the Lottery to pay for education.

He defended Hillary Clinton’s book It Takes A Village. ““They (the Republicans) see no shame in criticizing movies they have not seen, songs they have not heard, books they have not read.” I await his apology to Kid Rock at the RNC Convention — unless you want to go with the other, more recent hypocrisy there, in which case I await his berating of Kid Rock at the RNC Convention.

1992-03-01 On the CBS news program “Face the Nation,” Georgia Gov. Zell Miller said the average voter worries about being able to send his children to college, having health insurance and paying for a nursing home for his parents, rather than whether Democratic candidate Bill Clinton avoided the draft 30 years ago or not. He now defends the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, saying they have a right to be heard.

The singular issue over the years from the Usenet threads is the controversy over the Georgian flag. 1997/07/11 It is interesting to note that while lieutenant governor in 1987, Miller opposed such a change saying he did not think the flag was racist any more than the playing of Dixie was. I’m guessing this is the influence from being Lestor Maddux’s protege. But, the nickname “Zig-Zag Zell” exists for a reason. 1992-05-29 “What we fly today is not an enduring symbol of our heritage, but the fighting flag of those who wanted to preserve a segregated South in the face of the civil rights movement,” he said. “It is time we shake completely free of that era.” I cannot ascertain the degree to which this change of opinion comes from personal courage and conviction, finding himself in the National Democratic Party, or wanting to improve Georgia’s reputation as the world spotlighted Atlanta in the 1996 Olympic Games. Whatever is the case, 1996/06/28
Miller retreated from that noble stand
and hasn’t said boo about the flag since.
For a flavour of the kind of opposition he met, well…

Caller: Yes, Mr. Grant, as a Yankee American I am outraged that there is an effort to remove the Georgia state flag because it has the Confederate battle flag on it. I think it’s an outrage. It’s a part of Georgia history, and it belongs there.

Grant: Well, uh, the people of Georgia are retaining it at least for now…

Caller: Thank God.

Grant: In spite of this wild-eyed Zell Miller, the Governor–

Caller: You said it.

Grant: –who’s trying to curry favor with his liberal pals up in the nation’s capital.

Caller: Definitely.

Grant: Uh, it stays, I don’t know why they make such a big issue out of it…

Caller: I don’t know, but I’ve also come to the conclusion that earth’s endangered species are not the spotted owl, nor the humpbacked whale, it is the white race. But there is an organization fighting for us, and it’s called the National Alliance, headed by the honorable Dr. William Pierce, in Hillsborough, West Virginia. P.O. Box 90246. Hail victory, blood and soil!

Grant: I’ve never heard of William Pierce, but, Dino, okay. He hung up after he delivered his message. I’m surprised young guys don’t just ride around in open cars with megaphones.

The NRA members are well over the map on him. July 1992 example: Georgia is a pretty good state for firearms owners. […] Our biggest problem now is Gov. Zell Miller who, as you saw at the DNC, thinks he is a Kennedy-in-waiting. But, he seemed to later regain their trust…

I have every confidence that he voted “yah” on the Gay Marriage Abolishment Amendment. To wit, compare and contrast from April 23, 1994. Gov. Zell Miller, who is seeking re-election, has said he doesn’t plan to “get in to lifestyles” in his campaign. His campaign manager, Jim Andrews, said Friday, “The Republicans can debate this issue if they want. We want to improve people’s lives.”

And, while we’re on the topic of scary homos:

June 10, 1999 brings us:

He attempted to incite local rage and terror about AIDS when he noted that Georgia Gov. Zell Miller’s invitation to hold the Gay Games in Atlanta “threatens the health, safety and welfare of the community.” (In a characteristically malicious jocular aside, Wysong added: “It is mind-boggling to imagine what activities constitute ‘gay games.'”) He exploited the combined homophobia and patriotic fervor of Cobb County’s conserva…

I think the new version of Zell Miller would consider gays as one of the extreme special interest groups that has hi-jacked his beloved Democratic Party.

Law And Order, Law and Order, Law and Order. He was at the forefront of the “3 Strikes and you’re out” craze, had a mandatory boot camp program (citing his experience in boot camp as putting him on the straight and narrow in his youth), (this ain’t impartial poster), and then there’s…

July 23, 1994 Most wanted posters for Georgia’s “10 top deadbeat parents” have been arriving by the hundreds this week at state office buildings. Already, a second printing of 1,000 posters is under way. And hundreds of women wanting to nominate their ex-husbands have called child support enforcement offices since Gov. Zell Miller announced the program last month.

Zell Miller played a key role in writing the Democratic Party’s warm milk platform in 1996. And he saideth:
“Republicans see America’s greatness through a rear view mirror,” said Georgia Gov. Zell Miller, co-chairman of the Democratic Platform Committee leading off platform speeches. ”Democrats see America’s greatness on the horizon just ahead.” (Along with repeating his barb against Dole on the topic of It Takes a Village.)

Like so. We Democrats are proud of our platform, and the Republicans are justified in being ashamed of theirs. They talk a lot about shame, the Republicans. Yet they see no shame in criticizing movies they have not seen, songs they have not heard, books they have not read, and a first family they cannot match — all in the name of a platform they will not even admit they’ve read,” said Gov. Zell Miller of Georgia.

AND “They want to abolish the Department of Education,” Miller shouted. “They bash schoolteachers and want to cut student loans. Abolish, bash and cut – those are the Republican ABCs for education.”

Apparently Zell Miller once took a more liberal stance toward sex ed. March 3, 1997
Ga. Gov. Miller stupidly says teens are going to fornicate (Jesus and Paul said fornication is sin, are not vulgar) anyway so help, encourage them.

If you look over his senate website, you’ll find that Zell Miller is quite proud of his pre-natal Music Appreciation Program.
from 1998
Gov. Zell Miller proposed Tuesday the state issue tapes or compact discs of classical music to parents of every newborn in Georgia as a way to help boost the baby’s intelligence later in life. “I propose that the parents of every baby born in Georgia — over 100,000 a year — be given a cassette or CD of music to be played often in the baby’s presence,” said Miller. “Research shows that reading to an infant, talking with an infant and especially having that infant listen to soothing music helps those trillions of brain connections to develop,
especially the ones related to math.” The governor’s $105,000 allocation for the free music was part of the $12.5 billion budget proposal he presented to the state General Assembly. Miller, who cited the study of classical music helping to increase IQ scores for college students as the reason for the allocation, said he asked the Atlanta Symphony conductor to help select music for recordings.

I recall Rush Limbaugh bashing this as big gummint gone amok.

Restoring the honor of Georgia against Jane Fonda. Later, he’d go after the cartoonists behind Snuffy Sniff. And, though I must agree here, the reality program based on The Beverly Hill-billies.

He probably now has enough wiggle room to claim that he wanted Bill Clinton to resign. Speaking out for the first time Monday, Democratic Gov. Zell Miller of Georgia called Mr. Clinton’s actions “shameful,” saying that he has “debased himself … and diminished the presidency. He has shattered his credibility,” said Mr. Miller, who refused to say whether he thinks the president should resign.

According to this, and comments I vaguely recall him making, “9/11 changed everything.” Which wouldn’t explain why he’s been a loyal Bush backer from Day 1 of the Bush Administration, backing every major policy proposal — he co-sponsored the Bush tax cuts. He was ever-so-eager to confirm John Ashcroft, early bi-partisan facade that the right wing used as ammuniation.

You know the rest, I think, by now. The New Republic picked up on the Zell Miller Effect early on in 2001.

Edgar Allen Poe Would Have Stopped 9/11

Saturday, August 28th, 2004

I posted this link to the sidebar back on August 7, pointing to the one sign that I found most incongruous…

Edgar Allen Poe Would Have Stopped 9/11.

Apparently, this is a reference to The Purloined Letter, and apparently, Mr. LaRouche has been sprinking his writing with references to Poe.

That’s where the LaRouchite has picked it up from.

That’s where other LaRouchites have picked it up from.

This classic mystery story shows clearly a little known principle of deception: A secret is best hidden by placing it in plain sight, but by adding calculated misdirection that prevents its proper appreciation by the onlooker! This insight, which I owe to Lyndon LaRouche, explains the lack of awareness of the British Monarchy as the center of the ruling class/conspiracy even in conspiracy research circles! While preoccupied by the search for and analysis of secret documents, always supplied abundantly by the conspiracy itself, the conspiracy researcher overlooks the obvious. Remember that the Royal Family was the first English language publisher of the “Protocols”!

I guess it’s now on the official LaRouche reading list. Alongisde The Occult Technology of Power: The Initiation of the Son of a Finance Capitalist Into the Arcane Secrets of Economic and Political Power–Rends the veils of ideology, propaganda, confusion, and self-delusion to expose the terrifying evil which plunders and tortures the 20th Century by The Transcriber

(In other news of this type: LaRouche has joined forces behind the Kerry camp… I guess that means he’s in the “Anybody But Bush” camp.)

Okay. I challenge you to find any political-oriented blog or website out there not by a LaRouchite that has paid him as much mind as I have.

………….
(UPDATE: more here:

If Americans understood Beethoven, would George Bush be President?
No algebraic formula can prove the necessary existence of five Platonic Solids!
Only classical singing can get Bush and Cheney the fugue out of the White House.
If you can’t double the cube, your degree is worthless.

Break on Through to the Other Side

Friday, August 27th, 2004

Janeane Garofalo and Sam Seder’s “Majority Report” is probably my favourite Air America radio program, due to the fact that it’s a little more independant from mainline DNC than the others.

I was surprised by something said by Rush Limbaugh’s guest host today.

Whenever Janeanse and Sam get on the topic of “black box voting”, or computerized voting, they insist, somewhat humourously, that their callers call into right-wing radio hosts and discuss the possibility that hackers might want to hi-jack the election, and perhaps hackers would tend to be liberal (instead of a coordinated assualt from Republicans, as they tend to suggest by quoting the Diebold official, and his ties with the Republican Party).

(My guess is that hackers would change the election to a Kevin Mitnik / Bill Gates ticket, but nevermind…)

So, what does the Limbaugh replacement say?

He goes off on the ways that the Democrats are thinking of stealing the election. They seem to have a problem with the idea of ex-felons voting (the back-drop explanation for Jeb Bush’s pre-2000 and pre-2004 antics on the subject). And “foreigners monitoring the election.”

But, he said it, in a list of ways the Democrats are scheming to steal the election. “Eleven year olds hacking into the computer – voting equipment…”

A positive, more than likely, on the road to bi-partisan understanding of the trouble with computerized voting equipment.

………….

On the same show, an ignorant lady called in about the Liberal Media and their mischaracterization of the situation in Iraq. “Heck! It took us what — 60 years to get move out of Germany, and back after the war, the Liberal Media were painting the same bleak image of post-war Germany.”

She was, as far as I can tell, referring to this chain email. (Who writes these things, anyways?)

But, more perplexing than simply being taken in by disinformation designed to fit your own pre-conceptions and prejudices, is the call at against the “Liberal Media.” The isolationists, to the degree that they weren’t drowned out by World War II and weren’t completely knocked off by the Republican decision to nominate Willkie in 1940, were in the conservative camp. (Hence the current distinction between “paleo” and “neo” conservativism.)

The “Liberal Media” would not be trying to knock away Harry Truman.

The State of Affairs: We are Doomed.

Friday, August 27th, 2004

Sayseth Bush: “They’ve seen me make decisions, they’ve seen me under trying times, they’ve seen me weep, they’ve seen me laugh, they’ve seen me hug,”

Interesting.

The internals of all the polls, the ones that show Bush with a 39% or thereabouts job approval rating as well as a slim within-the-margin of error lead over John Kerry, have Bush ahead in two categories, and two categories only.

“Handling of War on Terror”, nebulous and fuzzy as that be. (Divorced from this is “Handling on Iraq”; the average Fox News viewer would be outraged at the pollsters separation of questions. Notice that Bush now says that he thinks the American public will vote him in, “even if they disagree with the war”, because of some, quote – in – quote “steady leadership” and the idea that “I’m not going to shift principles or shift positions”* )

The second “issue” that Bush has a decided advantage over Bush is the matter of… “Likeability”, nebulous and fuzzy as that be.

To work on this “strength” and gain a few important photo-ops, this is the reason that he is going to give his speech in the middle of the crowd.

We’ve seen him weep. We’ve seen him laugh. We’ve seen him hug.

Don’t you want to see him weep, laugh, and hug for four more years?

* The incongruity index spikes up a bit, as The New York Times interview feature has him saying thiseth, “I don’t think you give timelines to dictators.”

Roosevelt Era Politics

Friday, August 27th, 2004

April 30, 1932
Around Smith will rally the big Democratic chiefs of plutocracy — the Wall Street crowd, that always finances the various Tammanies of both parties, Republican and Democratic. These plutocratic leaders, for all their plug-hat respectability, are fundamentally responsible for the corruption that stigmatizes civil governments in American towns that pass the million mark.

Roosevelt is not sufficiently liberal to attract and to hold Bryan’s following. As a rabble-rouser he is badly infected with weasel words. He has a charming sense of balance, and when he seems to be going well as a progressive or a liberal he checks himself with a string of “althoughs”, “buts”, “on the other hands”, and “on the conteraries” which takes the heart out of Western liberals.

The West will take Roosevelt in the Democratic Convention not because it loves Roosevelt but because it hates Tammany and distrusts the plutocratic aristocracy in the Old South. So Roosevelt’s Western followers will not be a last-ditch crowd as McAdoo’s was.

The agrarian West is ready for a rabble-rouser. Roosevelt does not fill the bill, but he is the only one in sight. […]

Just now, the West wouble probably vote against the president because it wants to vote against somebody and it isn’t particular about who shall be the object of its wrath. But, given a row in the Democratic Convention, let Smith and his Tammany plutocrats defeat Roosevelt and nominate a reactionary like Ritchie, and the protest vote of the West will be divided. They have two men to vote against, and Hoover may win. He probably will.

June 10, 1936
Hoover Acclaimed in Days of Ovations

Former president Hoover arrived here today to become the center of a series of rousing demonstrations leading up to his speech tonight before the Republican convention. As a result his political stock again was put on a rising market.

Following his attack on the New Deal and, for him, the virtually unprecedented demonstration which came after he called his party members to a “Holy Crusade for freedom”, the California delegation went into session to discuss, among other things, the possibility of placing Mr. Hoover’s name before the convention for the Presidential nomination. […]

Chairman Snell tried to aquiet the crowd but could not be heard. The former President stood out on the platform, making no attempt for the moment to stop a demonstration far greater than that accorded him in the same hall when he appeared here in October, 1932, as a candidate for re-election. […]

AMr Snell finally appealed to Mr. Hoover. The former President walked to the lectern and held up his hand for silence, but the crowd would not stop even then for several minutes. It did not understand that radio time was flying fast. […]

Soon after he arrived supporters in his own delegation from Clifornia raised the new slogan: “Hoover or his choice.”

June 18, 1940
As in a wartime “blackout” started by air raid sirens supporters of most of the Republican Presidential candidates groped in some perplexity today as they sought to explain the rapidly growing sentiment in behalf of Wendell L. Willkie and to arrive at a general conclusion that he was “the man to beat” at the convention next week.

Representative Halleck of Indiana, Mr. Willkie’s only spokesman in the vanguard of delegates and campaign managers, was somewhat baffled by the wide sweep of the Willkie talk, but he was about the only one of the official or semi-official campaign chiefs on the ground who was thoroughly enjoying himself.

J Russel Sprague of New York, campaign manager for District Attorney Dewey, reached Philadelphia too late in the day to get at first hand an idea of the number of times the question, “What are you going to do about Willkie?” was being asked.

May 27, 1944
Deep down in the Wllace opposition is a contest for control of the Democratic party organization. Renomination of the Iowan would be an undeniable signal that Franklin D. Roosevelt still hopes to throw the party to its liberal wing, as revived, enlarged, and to a great extent, created during his incumbency, when he steps down from the Presidential chair. […]

The current search for a Vice Presidential candidates in the Democratic party is, frankly, more of a stop-Wallace movement than it is a “start” movement for anyone else. If the political leaders finally center on some one name, it will be more because of the feeling that they can succeed in substituting this particular one in the President’s favor than anything else. […]

They know, for instance, that he has become the symbol of the ultra-New Dealers and CIO labor in their resistance to the recent so-called “rightist” tendencies within the party and the Administration.

June 28, 1944
The change in Administration, Dewey confidently predicted, would bring “an end to one-man government in Washington.”

After Jan 20, Inaguration Day, he said, the Government would have a Cabinet of the “ablest men and women to be found in America” who would receive full delegation of the powers of their office.

He made an appeal time after time to youth – youth to win the war, youth to keep the peace.

No organization of peace can last if it is slipped through by “stealth or trickery”, he said. Making and keeping the peace was “not a task for men who specialize in dividing our people.”

“It is no task to be entrusted to stubborn men, grown old and tired and quarrelsome in office,” he said. “We learned that in 1919.”

FDR

Thursday, August 26th, 2004

I’ve nothing to say on politics. Perhaps the goop I tossed in my eye to cure my pink eye is making a bit too drowsy. And Perhaps the ongoing media obsession with Swift Boat Veterans for Obfuscation has me shrugging and bored… (for a better explanation to the shift to Kerry’s protest phase Mark Evanier says thus.

In lieu of anything else, here’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1936, days before the election, at the high-point in his presidency. Perhaps I’ll turn around and see if I can find a Ronald Reagan speech days before the 1984 election, and compare and contrast.

Senator Wagner, Governor Lehman, ladies and gentlemen:

ON THE eve of a national election, it is well for us to stop for a moment and analyze calmly and without prejudice the effect on our Nation of a victory by either of the major political parties.

The problem of the electorate is far deeper, far more v1tauhan the continuance in the Presidency of any individual. For the greater issue goes beyond units of humanity-it goes to humanity itself.

In 1932 the issue was the restoration of American democracy; and the American people were in a mood to win. They did win. In 1936 the issue is the preservation of their victory. Again they are in a mood to win. Again they will win.

More than four years ago in accepting the Democratic nomination in Chicago, I said: “Give me your help not to win votes alone, but to win in this crusade to restore America to its own people.”

The banners of that crusade still fly in the van of a Nation that is on the march.

It is needless to repeat the details of the program which this Administration has been hammering out on the anvils of experience. No amount of misrepresentation or statistical contortion can conceal or blur or smear that record. Neither the attacks of unscrupulous enemies nor the exaggerations of over-zealous friends will serve to mislead the American people.

What was our hope in 1932? Above all other things the American people wanted peace. They wanted peace of mind instead of gnawing fear.

First, they sought escape from the personal terror which had stalked them for three years. They wanted the peace that comes from security in their homes: safety for their savings, permanence in their jobs, a fair profit from their enterprise.

Next, they wanted peace in the community, the peace that springs from the ability to meet the needs of community life: schools, playgrounds, parks, sanitation, highways- those things which are expected of solvent local government. They sought escape from disintegration and bankruptcy in local and state affairs.
They also sought peace within the Nation: protection of their currency, fairer wages, the ending of long hours of toil, the abolition of child labor, the elimination of wild-cat speculation, the safety of their children from kidnappers.

And, finally, they sought peace with other Nations-peace in a world of unrest. The Nation knows that I hate war, and I know that the Nation hates war.

I submit to you a record of peace; and on that record a well-founded expectation for future peace—peace for the individual, peace for the community, peace for the Nation, and peace with the world.

Tonight I call the roll—the roll of honor of those who stood with us in 1932 and still stand with us today.
Written on it are the names of millions who never had a chance—men at starvation wages, women in sweatshops, children at looms.

Written on it are the names of those who despaired, young men and young women for whom opportunity had become a will-o’-the-wisp.

Written on it are the names of farmers whose acres yielded only bitterness, business men whose books were portents of disaster, home owners who were faced with eviction, frugal citizens whose savings were insecure.

Written there in large letters are the names of countless other

Americans of all parties and all faiths, Americans who had eyes to see and hearts to understand, whose consciences were burdened because too many of their fellows were burdened, who looked on these things four years ago and said, “This can be changed. We will change it.”

We still lead that army in 1936. They stood with us then because in 1932 they believed. They stand with us today because in 1 936 they know. And with them stand millions of new recruits who have come to know.
Their hopes have become our record.

We have not come this far without a struggle and I assure you we cannot go further without a struggle.
For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.

For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.

I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.

The American people know from a four-year record that today there is only one entrance to the White House—by the front door. Since March 4, 1933, there has been only one pass-key to the White House. I have carried that key in my pocket. It is there tonight. So long as I am President, it will remain in my pocket.

Those who used to have pass-keys are not happy. Some of them are desperate. Only desperate men with their backs to the wall would descend so far below the level of decent citizenship as to foster the current pay-envelope campaign against America’s working people. Only reckless men, heedless of consequences, would risk the disruption of the hope for a new peace between worker and employer by returning to the tactics of the labor spy.

Here is an amazing paradox! The very employers and politicians and publishers who talk most loudly of class antagonism and the destruction of the American system now undermine that system by this attempt to coerce the votes of the wage earners of this country. It is the 1936 version of the old threat to close down the factory or the office if a particular candidate does not win. It is an old strategy of tyrants to delude their victims into fighting their battles for them.

Every message in a pay envelope, even if it is the truth, is a command to vote according to the will of the employer. But this propaganda is worse—it is deceit.

They tell the worker his wage will be reduced by a contribution to some vague form of old-age insurance. They carefully conceal from him the fact that for every dollar of premium he pays for that insurance, the employer pays another dollar. That omission is deceit.

They carefully conceal from him the fact that under the federal law, he receives another insurance policy to help him if he loses his job, and that the premium of that policy is paid 100 percent by the employer and not one cent by the worker. They do not tell him that the insurance policy that is bought for him is far more favorable to him than any policy that any private insurance company could afford to issue. That omission is deceit.

They imply to him that he pays all the cost of both forms of insurance. They carefully conceal from him the fact that for every dollar put up by him his employer puts up three dollars—three for one. And that omission is deceit.

But they are guilty of more than deceit. When they imply that the reserves thus created against both these policies will be stolen by some future Congress, diverted to some wholly foreign purpose, they attack the integrity and honor of American Government itself. Those who suggest that, are already aliens to the spirit of American democracy. Let them emigrate and try their lot under some foreign flag in which they have more confidence.

The fraudulent nature of this attempt is well shown by the record of votes on the passage of the Social Security Act. In addition to an overwhelming majority of Democrats in both Houses, seventy-seven Republican Representatives voted for it and only eighteen against it and fifteen Republican Senators voted for it and only five against it. Where does this last-minute drive of the Republican leadership leave these Republican Representatives and Senators who helped enact this law?

I am sure the vast majority of law-abiding businessmen who are not parties to this propaganda fully appreciate the extent of the threat to honest business contained in this coercion.

I have expressed indignation at this form of campaigning and I am confident that the overwhelming majority of employers, workers and the general public share that indignation and will show it at the polls on Tuesday next.

Aside from this phase of it, I prefer to remember this campaign not as bitter but only as hard-fought. There should be no bitterness or hate where the sole thought is the welfare of the United States of America. No man can occupy the office of President without realizing that he is President of all the people.

It is because I have sought to think in terms of the whole Nation that I am confident that today, just as four years ago, the people want more than promises.

Our vision for the future contains more than promises.

This is our answer to those who, silent about their own plans, ask us to state our objectives.

Of course we will continue to seek to improve working conditions for the workers of America—to reduce hours over-long, to increase wages that spell starvation, to end the labor of children, to wipe out sweatshops. Of course we will continue every effort to end monopoly in business, to support collective bargaining, to stop unfair competition, to abolish dishonorable trade practices. For all these we have only just begun to fight.

Of course we will continue to work for cheaper electricity in the homes and on the farms of America, for better and cheaper transportation, for low interest rates, for sounder home financing, for better banking, for the regulation of security issues, for reciprocal trade among nations, for the wiping out of slums. For all these we have only just begun to fight.

Of course we will continue our efforts in behalf of the farmers of America. With their continued cooperation we will do all in our power to end the piling up of huge surpluses which spelled ruinous prices for their crops. We will persist in successful action for better land use, for reforestation, for the conservation of water all the way from its source to the sea, for drought and flood control, for better marketing facilities for farm commodities, for a definite reduction of farm tenancy, for encouragement of farmer cooperatives, for crop insurance and a stable food supply. For all these we have only just begun to fight.

Of course we will provide useful work for the needy unemployed; we prefer useful work to the pauperism of a dole.

Here and now I want to make myself clear about those who disparage their fellow citizens on the relief rolls. They say that those on relief are not merely jobless—that they are worthless. Their solution for the relief problem is to end relief—to purge the rolls by starvation. To use the language of the stock broker, our needy unemployed would be cared for when, as, and if some fairy godmother should happen on the scene.

You and I will continue to refuse to accept that estimate of our unemployed fellow Americans. Your Government is still on the same side of the street with the Good Samaritan and not with those who pass by on the other side.

Again—what of our objectives?

Of course we will continue our efforts for young men and women so that they may obtain an education and an opportunity to put it to use. Of course we will continue our help for the crippled, for the blind, for the mothers, our insurance for the unemployed, our security for the aged. Of course we will continue to protect the consumer against unnecessary price spreads, against the costs that are added by monopoly and speculation. We will continue our successful efforts to increase his purchasing power and to keep it constant.

For these things, too, and for a multitude of others like them, we have only just begun to fight.

All this—all these objectives—spell peace at home. All our actions, all our ideals, spell also peace with other nations.

Today there is war and rumor of war. We want none of it. But while we guard our shores against threats of war, we will continue to remove the causes of unrest and antagonism at home which might make our people easier victims to those for whom foreign war is profitable. You know well that those who stand to profit by war are not on our side in this campaign.

“Peace on earth, good will toward men”—democracy must cling to that message. For it is my deep conviction that democracy cannot live without that true religion which gives a nation a sense of justice and of moral purpose. Above our political forums, above our market places stand the altars of our faith—altars on which burn the fires of devotion that maintain all that is best in us and all that is best in our Nation.

We have need of that devotion today. It is that which makes it possible for government to persuade those who are mentally prepared to fight each other to go on instead, to work for and to sacrifice for each other. That is why we need to say with the Prophet: “What doth the Lord require of thee—but to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.” That is why the recovery we seek, the recovery we are winning, is more than economic. In it are included justice and love and humility, not for ourselves as individuals alone, but for our Nation.

That is the road to peace.

Odd

Wednesday, August 25th, 2004