From: jmk@cbnews.cb.att.com (joseph.m.knapp)
Subject: Re: The Difference Between Conservatives and Liberals
Organization: AT&T
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 00:22:35 GMT


Sen. John F. Kennedy, acceptance of the New York Liberal Party Nomination,
September 14, 1960:

 What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?"
 If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who
 is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and
 who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this
 party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal."
 But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind,
 someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares
 about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their
 schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties --
 someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions
 that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a
 "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."
 
 But first, I would like to say what I understand the word "Liberal" to
 mean and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a "Liberal,"
 and what it means in the presidential election of 1960.
 
 In short, having set forth my view -- I hope for all time -- two nights
 ago in Houston, on the proper relationship between church and state, I
 want to take the opportunity to set forth my views on the proper 
 relationship between the state and the citizen. This is my political
 credo:
 
 I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human
 liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source
 of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our
 invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens
 as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith.
 For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform
 promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability
 through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself
 and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which
 all human life deserves.
 
 I believe also in the United States of America, in the promise that it 
 contains and has contained throughout our history of producing a society so
 abundant and creative and so free and responsible that it cannot only
 fulfill the aspirations of its citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon
 for all mankind. I do not believe in a superstate. I see no magic in tax
 dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste
 and incompetence of large-scale federal bureaucracies in this administration
 as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary
 individual effort can do the job and do it well. But I believe in a
 government which acts, which exercises its full powers and full 
 responsibilities. Government is an art and a precious obligation; and when
 it has a job to do, I believe it should do it. And this requires not only
 great ends but that we propose concrete means of achieving them.
 
 [...]
 
 This is an important election -- in many ways as important as any this
 century -- and I think that the Democratic Party and the Liberal Party
 here in New York, and those who believe in progress all over the United
 States, should be associated with us in this great effort.

 The reason that Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman
 and Adlai Stevenson had influence abroad, and the United States in their
 time had it, was because they moved this country here at home, because
 they stood for something here in the United States, for expanding the
 benefits of our society to our own people, and the people around the
 world looked to us as a symbol of hope.
 
 [...]
 
 Some pundits are saying it's 1928 all over again. I say it's 1932 all over
 again. I say this is the great opportunity that we will have in our time
 to move our people and this country and the people of the free world
 beyond the new frontiers of the 1960s.
 
---
Joe Knapp     jmk@cbvox.att.com
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton,talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.bush