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Show Administration Official Reveals Why He Became a Democrat own destiny. "President Kennedy made a memorable statement in his inaugural in-augural address: "Think not of what the country can do for you; think of what you can do for your country." Many people have asked how they can respond to this challenge. To me one of the important, things that it means is that we must be willing, enthusiastically en-thusiastically willing, to have government take action so that important segments of our society so-ciety are not left over and left out. "The true image of the real Republican party is obscured by the statements and positions of some of their more enlightened office holders and office seekers. The hard core, dominant Republican Repub-lican philosophy is represented by that of their contributor group. It is represented by their I suburban reactionaries. It is represented by the old Roosevelt haters and Truman haters, who are waiting now to be told by Ev and Charlie whether to sneer or to snarl. It is represented by those Republicans who attempt from time to time to drop incumbent in-cumbent Senators and Congressmen Congress-men of their party because they are "too liberal." It is represented repre-sented by those who try to move into office under the disguise of the well known "me too" philosophy, philos-ophy, although at heart they or their most avid supporters are against publicly financed welfare programs, are against expanded public support for education, are against public spending for aid to underdeveloped countries, and are against bold action on civil rights. 1 "It is gratifying to me that the national leaders of the Democratic Demo-cratic party do not feel that they have a monopoly on virtue. They do not feel that they should be above criticism and that nothing the Republicans advocate or do could possibly be good. President Kennedy has referred only recently re-cently to his predecessor as a "great president." It is in rather striking contrast to the treatment treat-ment which President Truman received when he left office." An official high in the Democratic Demo-cratic administration has given his reasons for devotion to the ' party of Jefferson and Jackson. Postmaster General Day, in a recent speech, explained it this way: ; "First, I believe in the great est good for the greatest number. num-ber. I suppose that even the three former chairmen of the National Association of Manufacturers, Manu-facturers, who are listed as leaders lead-ers of the John Birch Society, would profess to believe in the ' general principle of the greatest good for the greatest number. In contrast to their approach, I believe be-lieve in a reasonable degree of government action to help bring it about, without reliance purely on the "trickle down" philosophy. philoso-phy. A second important reason, which is especially evident at the present time, is that the Democratic Demo-cratic party believes in people people of all kinds and in all places. It believes in them in a confident and enthusiastic way and not merely in manipulating them for selfish purposes by press agentry and propaganda. "Just as I am sure that there are no Kennedy Democrats in the John Birch Society, I am just as conscious that nearly all of the people I meet who are fearful and suspicious of the foreign born, of labor unions, of intellectuals, of those with limited lim-ited education, of the power and aspirations of the rank and file of common people these people who feel this fear are usually mebers of the opposition party. "They include 'the people who have been saying off and on for 30 years that the reason there is an employment problem is because be-cause a lot of people are shiftless and prefer to live on a dole. I've never gotten an answer as to why at certain times there are 2 million mil-lion of these supposedly lazy people, and at other times, such as on January 20, 1961, over 5 million. This opposition group seems perfectly willing to have a great many people left over and left out when it comes to sharing the benefits of our dynamic society. This element in our opposition longs wistfully for the "good old days" when the world was not in such a seething ferment of struggle for a better life. These people repeatedly tell us that nowadays nothing is quite right. They seem afraid of the world around them rather than pleased to be a part of such an exciting atmosphere. Perhaps without knowing it they reflect a "sur-Vial "sur-Vial of the fittest" philosophy. They talk about "individual in-iative" in-iative" without stopping to think what our complex industrial sys-I sys-I tern has done to the power of each individual to control his |
