New York has had many great leaders. One of them has an important meaning for this campaign--that great American Al Smith. When he received the presi… - Lyndon B. Johnson
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New York has had many great leaders. One of them has an important meaning for this campaign--that great American Al Smith. When he received the presidential nomination, he said he would follow the principles of Woodrow Wilson: "First, the people as the source, and their interests and desires, as the text, of law and government. Second, individual liberty as the objective of all law." Well, today there are those who call upon us to abandon our historic principles under the pretense of pursuing that individual liberty which Al Smith prized so highly. And yet, time and time again, they themselves have struck at the foundation of our American freedom. They call for freedom and then they attack the courts which protect that freedom. They call for freedom and they would strip away the rights of those accused of crime, rights developed over centuries to protect against arbitrary power. They call for freedom and yet accuse their opponents of being soft on communism or even worse, branding as heretics or traitors all those who ever disagree with them. They call for freedom and they attack our religious leaders for trying to exercise their ancient responsibility--as clergymen and citizens--to guide people in the course of life. But worst of all, they call for freedom and yet they help create the atmosphere of hate and fear and suspicion in which individual liberty faces its maximum danger.
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About
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (27 August 1908 – 22 January 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician. After a long career in U.S. legislatures, Johnson became the vice president of the United States of America under John F. Kennedy, from 1961 to 1963. A Democrat, Johnson became the 36th U.S. president in 1963, after Kennedy's assassination. He served in the role until 1969.
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Also Known As
Native Name:
Lyndon Baines Johnson
Also Known As:LBJ
Alternative Names:
Lyndon Johnson
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President Johnson
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L. B. Johnson
Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope--some because of their poverty, and some because of their color, and all too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity. This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America. I urge this Congress and all Americans to join with me in that effort. It will not be a short or easy struggle, no single weapon or strategy will suffice, but we shall not rest until that war is won. The richest Nation on earth can afford to win it. We cannot afford to lose it. One thousand dollars invested in salvaging an unemployable youth today can return $40,000 or more in his lifetime. Poverty is a national problem, requiring improved national organization and support. But this attack, to be effective, must also be organized at the State and the local level and must be supported and directed by State and local efforts. For the war against poverty will not be won here in Washington. It must be won in the field, in every private home, in every public office, from the courthouse to the White House. The program I shall propose will emphasize this cooperative approach to help that one-fifth of all American families with incomes too small to even meet their basic needs.
Americans of every race and color have died in battle to protect our freedom. Americans of every race and color have worked to build a nation of widening opportunities. Now our generation of Americans has been called on to continue the unending search for justice within our own borders. We believe that all men are created equal. Yet many are denied equal treatment. We believe that all men have certain unalienable rights. Yet many Americans do not enjoy those rights. We believe that all men are entitled to the blessings of liberty. Yet millions are being deprived of those blessings — not because of their own failures, but because of the color of their skin. The reasons are deeply imbedded in history and tradition and the nature of man. We can understand — without rancor or hatred — how this all happened. But it cannot continue. Our Constitution, the foundation of our Republic, forbids it. The principles of our freedom forbid it. Morality forbids it. And the law I will sign tonight forbids it.
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Our chief weapons in a more pinpointed attack will be better schools, and better health, and better homes, and better training, and better job opportunities to help more Americans, especially young Americans, escape from squalor and misery and unemployment rolls where other citizens help to carry them. Very often a lack of jobs and money is not the cause of poverty, but the symptom. The cause may lie deeper in our failure to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities, in a lack of education and training, in a lack of medical care and housing, in a lack of decent communities in which to live and bring up their children. But whatever the cause, our joint Federal-local effort must pursue poverty, pursue it wherever it exists--in city slums and small towns, in sharecropper shacks or in migrant worker camps, on Indian Reservations, among whites as well as Negroes, among the young as well as the aged, in the boom towns and in the depressed areas.
