His Kind of Party

This week the President of the U.S. described to a Republican audience in Boston Garden his idea of the Republican Party. It was founded, he said, "just a few months short of 100 years ago [when] the tremors of a divided nation were felt. To many, the drift toward civil war seemed fatefully sure. But there is no dispute as to the purpose inspiring the many groups who reached for a new hope and a new party which they called Republican. That purpose, everywhere plainly defined and passionately proclaimed, was to halt the extension of the institution of slavery.

"We, who shall shortly be celebrating the 100th anniversary of that party that so came to birth, find ourselves, too. living in a time dark with the shadow of dreaded war. It is a time, too, which has seen the institution of slavery--elevated now to the awful dignity of a political philosophy and inspired with the terrible ambition of world conquest--divide not a nation but the world against itself. And at this precise time again there has come the summons of the American people calling upon the Republican Party to redeem the hopes of the past and to save the promise of the future . . .

"The record of the present Administration is too short to be anything like definitive. But the facts that are plain are also indicative of deeply held ideas of the widest meaning . . .

"We have seen a cessation of fighting in the Korean war . . .

"We have sent shipments of wheat to Pakistan, medical and reconstruction supplies to Korea, food to Berlin. We have promised that our country will welcome tens of thousands of refugees from the terror of enslavement in lands of darkness . . .

"We have lifted stifling artificial controls from our economy . . .

"We have reduced government expenditures by billions of dollars . . .

"We have, in our respect for priceless civil and human rights, used the federal authority, wherever it clearly extends, to erase the stain of racial discrimination and segregation . . .

"If we turn from the legislative record of one congressional session to the party history of a hundred years, we learn more that is indicative--and yet little that is conclusively clear and binding upon us today.

"This fact is not surprising. A century of history records the changes in institutions: it does not fix their mold. And this was a century of shattering change . . . Over such a span of time, the only perfectly consistent institution was a dead institution. And the Republican Party was--and is--very much alive ... It helped mold each age and was itself molded by each age--the extremist party in one day, 'the champion of something called 'normalcy' in another . . .

"This party of ours is free. We are the political captives of no section or interest of our country--and we are the prisoners of no static political or economic dogmas ruling our decisions. [We] make decisions not in the light of some rigidly preconceived political axiom, but in the only light in which we can clearly discern what is just--the peace and well-being of our whole people . . .

"I venture to summarize [Republican principles] in this one statement of belief:

"We are one nation, gifted by God with the reason and the will to govern ourselves, and returning our thanks to him by respecting his supreme creation--the free individual . . .

"This is the kind of America--and the kind of Republican Party--in which I believe. I do not know how to define it with political labels. Such labels are, in our age, cheap and abundant.

"We are liberal--for we do believe that, in judging his own daily welfare, each citizen, however humble, has greater wisdom than any government, however great.

"We are progressive--for we are less impressed with the difficulties we observed yesterday than the opportunities we envision tomorrow.

"We are conservative--for we can conceive of no higher commission that history could have conferred upon us than that which we humbly bear--the preservation, in this time of tempest and of peril, of the spiritual values that alone give dignity and meaning to man's pilgrimage on this earth.

"So, in spirit, we go back through this century of wondrous change, to find that, after all, certain truths have changed not at all."

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