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Address to Insurance Convention in Miami
June 15, 1968
I have locked forward eagerly to an opportunity once
again to be with the members of this organization. Through
many years of public life I have learned to rely on your
leadership -- and your membership -- and it is good to have
this chance to express my appreciation when there is nothing
I seek but the pleasure of your company.
This convention has been action-packed and you will carry
home with you a great deal of value to your business and your
customers. You have come here in freedom you have worked and
played among abundance -- and I'm quite sure you will go home
singing God Bless America.
God has blessed America. In spite of all that is said by
our detractors at home and abroad, this country is more than
ever the land of the free and the home of the brave. The evidence
being daily given by our young men in Viet Nam is of a nation
devoted and courageous.
True. we do help our enemies point out our weaknesses.
If they need evidence of a flaw in our society. we send them
a picture: if that is not enough. some merican spokesman
will assure them that we are in an advanced state of moral
decay.
A few days ago a young man who aspired to the leadership
of this nation was assassinated. His death is every American's
loss. The course of history has been changed; the nature of our
open democracy has been affected.
One man. by his act of violence
has begun to erect a barrier between the American public and
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those who seek to lead them. and such a barrier is not
compatible with democracy.
Arthur Schlesinger. Jr., the historian, places the guilt
for this deed on every American. He conceives that we, as a
nation. live under some primal curse that springs from our
dark past.
Spokesmen for the Arab world place the blane on the
American nation as accessory to the murder or their Palestinean
homeland.
James Reston senses 'something in the sir...a kind of
moral delinquency. "
A newspaper editor reasoned that Robert Kennedy's death
was a harvest of hate that our souls are overdue for a
thorough cleansing.
Colleges are full of discontent.
rebellion. Police are using force on campuses where reason has
always prevailed.
Riots and sit-ins have become common vehicles of social
and political expression.
Obviously. we have made serious mistakes. I would suggest
to you, tho. that the wrong goat is being driven into the
wilderness.
This is not an evil nation, nor a cursed one. In the long
history of mankind's struggle from slime towards the sublime.
Professors are counselling
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no other nation in so short a time has done so much for so
many. Our greatest mistake is that we have let our reach
exceed our grasp. And with our eyes on the stars, we have
stumbled.
The murder of John Kennedy by a warped American schooled
in Russia and Cuba. and of Robert Kennedy by an immigrant
Arab, and of Hartin Luther King by an escaped convict if that
be so, do not support an argument damning this nation with
a birthright of violence.
The greatest mistake we made with Oswald was that we let
him live in freedom in this country after he rejected it.
The greatest mistake we made with Sirhan sirhan was that,
out of compassion for his uprooted people, we gave him a free-
to which he was not equal.
The greatest mistake we made with the reputed assassin
of Martin Luther King was that we did not imprison him securely
enough.
The mistake this country is making -- and it is a mis
take of the head, not the heart -- is that we are attempting
to expand in incompatible ways and at unattainable rates
both our concept of freedom and our ideal of justice.
There is a limit to freedom. There is a point beyond which
it cannot be expanded without destroying itself.
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When the concept of freedom is expanded to include the
right to violate the social compact which is the fabric of
freedom. it destroys that fabric -- and freedom.
When the excerciee of freedom ignores both self-restraint
and social restraint, it is not freedom. but anarchy.
And when society, in the pursuit of greater freedom,
condonea license and anarchy, it cannot long remain free.
But thank God we live in a country where the problem
is not too little freedom, but too much.
Justice. too. has its limitations. Perfect freedom
and complete justice are not compatible as long as man is
subject to error. To be free is to have the right to be
wrong.
In 1963, in addressing the Commerce Committee or the
United States Senate I made these remarks:
"In our eagerness to make all things right with the
world, let us not forget that inherent in and inseparable
from freedom is the right to make errors. If this govern-
ment were all wise, and all powerful, it could prohibit all
error. In such event this might be a better nation. But it
would not be a free one. nd the state would have taken
the place of God.
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To some extent the rebellion in our streets is a demand
in the name of justice for economic and social equality to
equal our political equality. But these are vastaly different
concepts. To be free is to be unequal. Equal freedom guarantees
unequal economics and social condition.
Those who demand equality in the name of justice may secure
equality. but it will be at the price of freedom. That is the
choice Communism has made and their freedom is part of the price
they have paid.
Still. just as in another century the cry was for liberty,
today its many forms are basically a cry for justice. All across
the earth, among all nations and races, men have caught a vision
of a world in which every man receives his due, and every child
is freed from the prison of adverse circumstances, and that vision,
or mirage, is turning the world up-side down.
Castro persuaded himself and the people of Cuba that
they lived under an unjust system, and that he would create one
in which the farmer owned his land, the Wage earner received a
fair wage, and every child could walk through education's door
to unlimited opportunity. Never mind that the vision and reality
are far apart -- it is the vision they saw and served.
Out of the 38 nations of the world where annual per capita
income is less than $100, 32 have been involved in significant
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conflicts in the last 10 years. Indeed, they have suffered
an average of two major outbreaks of violence per country in
that period.
These are governments many of whose people were not con-
vinced they were receiving justice from the economic system.
But what is justice?
To be a bell player - it is an honest umpire with good
eyesight.
To a migrant laborer it is a fair wage and decent living
conditions.
To a Negro it is some yet ill-defined equality.
To a rebellious college student, it is a voice in the
affairs of the world of which he has lately become aware.
To a husband or father, it is the safety of his wife or
daughter wherever in this land they may be.
For a child, it is health and education.
For an older citizen. it is security in dignity.
The demand for justice takes a thousand forms. Like
beauty. it lies in the eyes of the beholder.
Sometimes demands for justice clash with each other:
sometimes they clash with concepts of freedom and private
property: sometimes they clash with the soverignity of
the law.
Somehow this nation must achieve a workable and accept
able accommodation between all these conflicting demands. To
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fail is either to forcibly repress the minority or overthrow
the unjority. In America, neither of those results is
tolerable.
Somehow this Nation must achieve a balance between the
social and economic justice to which we are increasingly
committed, and the bedrock freedoms upon which the whole
fabric of our democratic society depends.
We have decided as a nation to bring the advantage of
medical science to all who are diseased and disabled. In
a nation which began with a commitment that no American should
be imprisoned for debt, nor without due process, there has
gradually formed a commitment that no American shall be
imprisoned because of disease it it is in the power of his
countrymen to free him.
we have decided to clean up our cities ... to make them
attractive and safe. How can we prevent public obuses without
destroying private rights?
How can we police our streets with the vigor and effective-
ness that will insure the safety of our peeple without destroying
the hard-earned liberties of the individual?
We have decided to give every child the opportunity to learn --
how can we achieve that kind of equality and not be bound by the
lowest common denominator?
These are goals with which none can quarrel because they
do but seek for everyone what everyone seeks for himself.
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Somehow we must take the pragmatism of the new social
and economic demands and fit it into the idealism of our
political heritage.
It is not either surprising or alarming that we have
set our hearts on higher goals before we know how to achieve
them. Those who gathered around King John at Runymede did
not first compose the Magna Carts and then seek their free-
dom. They first decided to free themselves from tyranny,
and then crested the Magna Carta to secure their goal.
Our forefathers did not first draw a Constitution and
then adopt its goal. They first committed themselves to
higher political goals and then formed a Constitution to
secure them.
The American people are going through a period in
which they are setting new goals ... goals which go beyond
anything the world has ever envisionsd...goals of both
freedom, and justice at new and higher levels.
It is not strange that we should make mistakes.
They on the heights are not the souls
Who never erred nor went astray.
Who trod unswerving toward their goals
Along a smooth, rosebordered way
Nay: Those who stand where first comes dawn
Are those who stumbled -- but went on.
God Bless America.
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Ad. t. ... ... JSe1,16
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ase who seek to lead them, and such a barrier is not upatible with democracy. Arthur Schlesinger. Jr., the historian, places the guilt e this deed on every 7.merican. He conceives that we, as a tion, live under some primal curse that springs from our Riots and sit-ins have beconie common vehicles of soci.al and political expression. Obviously, we have made serious mistakes. I would suggest to you, tho. that the wrong gaat is being dz-iven into the
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