Remarks at Luncheon Meeting of the Republican National Committee and the Republican National Finance Committee

You can well imagine what a great privilege I feel in having this opportunity to visit with you as a friend. Inescapably, as the titular head of the party, you can understand the jealousy with which I regard that party and its success. My most earnest hope is that, when I leave my present post, the party will be healthier, stronger, more vital than it was when I started in that post.

Now we here represent possibly every calling, every phase in life. We have many viewpoints. Yet the first thing I want to point out is this: if we here had a discussion on the philosophy of government--that is, what is Government's role in the life of this Nation, in the life of the individual, what would it do and what would it not do--we would all agree with Lincoln. There would be no real argument among us on the results we would achieve. These different viewpoints we have arise out of our different environments, out of our different backgrounds.

I want to tell you something else that will, I hope, show you my belief. Often, when I see or hear from one of my friends in the party worrying about some particular action, there crosses my mind a sort of useless hope; a hope that that person and I might change places for a week.

I assure you when you take a decent philosophy of government and try to apply it to problems in which there are conflicting pressures and considerations of the utmost moment--whether they be in the foreign field or the economic field or the social field--you will find that this application must reflect a very broad consideration of every opinion about you. The opinion of the Secretary of State, or our leaders in Congress, or of the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare--all up and down the line. You strive to achieve in every single decision a further step along the broad highway where all Republicans can with honesty and decency move.

Now I realize that on any particular decision a very great amount of heat can be generated. But I do say this: life is not made up of just one decision here, or another one there. It is the total of the decisions that you make in your daily lives with respect to politics, to your family, to your environment, to the people about you. Government has to do that same thing. It is only in the mass that finally philosophy really emerges.

Now right here let me interrupt myself. I am talking, of course, about the Republican Party, my concept of what it can do to further America. So I just want to say this, so that our balance of values does not get out of order: our great enemy is the Communists. Our great struggle today is a free world against a dictator world. Our greatest enemy is not the Democrats. We certainly know that we can't have better allies when we are fighting anybody from abroad. So let's remember that, and as I talk, let's not build up a picture that the worst enemy anyone can have is a Democrat. Far from it. We just don't think they can do as good a job as we do. As a matter of fact, we know it!

I want to read you something that Lincoln said in 1853. He was discussing the founding of our country. He began by affirming the equal rights of all our citizens, and then he said: "We proposed to give all a chance; and we expected the weak to grow stronger, the ignorant wiser; and all better and happier together. We made the experiment; and the fruit is before us. Look at it--think of it."

Now what I should like to say, as I go ahead in the thoughts I am trying to express to you today is: look at it! Look at the Republican Party's record of the last two years. Think of What have we done? Have we done it in the tradition of Lincoln who said that the proper business of government is to do for a community or for a person those things which it or he cannot do at all or so well do for itself or himself; but in all things which the individual or community can do best, government should not interfere.

That is the guiding policy of this administration.

Now, in the thought and hope that Lincoln expressed so well, people came to us from overseas. Some saw here, or thought they saw, streets of gold. Others just saw shoes for their children, or a roof under which they might live securely. But most of them saw a symbol--a symbol of what men believing in themselves could, under God, accomplish, both for themselves, for their children, and for those about them.

Now some liked so much what they saw that they wanted to live in status quo. They wanted to go nowhere. But again most resolved that the principles should be everlastingly applied for the protection of individuals, the strengthening of the Republic, and the inspiration of mankind.

The Republican Party was born in such a resolve. It will remain great and go ahead forever, as long as it lives in that resolve. To take the basic principles of justice and decency, to apply them to the problems of today, and never to desert the effort to push forward in that light. Think of it! Look at it!

Now, if we are going to do that, let's have a bit of catechism in four simple questions. The first one is: what are the purposes of a political party? Well, one answer is winning elections. But it is certainly not good enough for a thoughtful Republican to win an election and not do something for this country.

I really believe that if we are going to give the purpose of a political party, we would have to say that the first fundamental is to present to all America a political philosophy which should interpret and apply our underlying principles to the current problems of the day.

The second purpose is to convert a multitude of pressures and pleas and special plans and purposes of our people into a composite whole which we call our platform--or our program. Again this program must always be true to the principles of the philosophy under which we live.

Third, the purpose of a political party is to promote individual participation in decisions, those affecting both administration and the conduct and course of the policies of government.

Now I believe any political party that is organized around this thoughtful concept is the greatest asset a country can have. But I believe also if it is banded together solely to seize power, it is nothing but a conspiracy. It must be for the promotion of ideals. The basis of a political party, just like the basis of true free government, is spiritual. Let us not forget it. We must live by ideals.

We could talk for a long time about the second question: how to achieve these purposes I have just outlined. Most of you know more about this than I do. My political experience is short, but I think most of you would agree it has also been quite intense.

I know that underlying every political purpose, every political aspiration and hope, must be work at the precinct level. Our Government means people of, by, and for the people. We must reach the individual. We must convey to him, and to America, the ideals by which we live, and then convince him. When he is convinced these ideals are great, that the method of application for which we stand is great, we know that he will support us.

Next, on top of that kind of work, we must have good candidates. Here, I think, I could talk to you for the next hour.

As I see the Republican Party, we have such a wealth of brains, of ability combined with personality, that it is a tragedy in any locality for any of us to push into nomination--from alderman up--someone who doesn't represent the ideals and purposes in which we all believe. We must have that kind of candidate. And if we do, it will take an awfully good bunch to beat us.

Now the next question we should answer is: what is the record of Republican purposes? Here of course, one would be tempted to go right back to Lincoln and come on down through our history and talk about anti-trust laws and all the things that our party has done for the progress of man. But just let us take only the last two years in the foreign field.

The Korean War has been stopped. There is no shooting-except in a sporadic way for the moment between Chinese--any place in the world. The Trieste problem has been solved. The Suez problem has been solved. Iran, which only two years ago we thought day by day we were going to see collapse and go to the enemy, has not only been rescued but is orienting itself more and more enthusiastically to the West. In South America, in Central America, great agreements have been made under which one foothold of international communism has been eliminated. We are moving ever steadily toward European unity. In the Pacific we have strengthened the free world by adoption of the Manila Pact and the Defense Treaty with the Republic of China.

So we are strong with our allies. There is less of a critical character in the international situation to keep us tense, giving us greater opportunity to push ahead with reasonable programs to solidify the security of the free world against the communist menace.

I think you are well acquainted with the record of the 83rd Congress. I have tried to find a phrase in which to define what the Republican Party has done at home. I have said we were "progressive moderates." Right at the moment I rather favor the term "dynamic conservatism." I believe we should be conservative. I believe we should conserve on everything that is basic to our system. We should be dynamic in applying it to the problems of the day so that all 163 million Americans will profit from it.

So for the moment I would say the record at home has been dynamic conservatism. You can go into the fields of agriculture, of the freedoms that have been restored to our economy, to the tax system--to everything we have done.

Now the next question: how can our party better achieve its purposes in the future?

First, we must make certain that as we present our philosophy, we apply it to the problems of the times. We must keep it in step. We are not antediluvian, nor are we trying to be men from Mars that will visit us probably in three or four hundred years.

I believe Tennyson said: "Be not the first by which the new is tried, nor yet the last to lay the old aside."

There are many ideas that are tested and true. We must take them and advance them step by step, as we go along with the constantly changing types and kinds of problems with which man is confronted.

Next, I think any party must strive to be national. We must work with all our might to eliminate sectionalism and factionalism.

And then my favorite subject: let's go after the youth. You know, if you get a 21-year-old to join you, he can probably vote in about fifteen national elections, and you have an accumulative strength. If you recruit each year only men, let us say, of 70, then in three or four years you would have to recruit enough to win another election. But if you get them when they are young and keep adding on and adding on, soon you will be getting the kind of majorities to which the Republican Party is truly entitled.

Now these are some of the thoughts that I wanted to share with you today. Nothing startling, nothing new, in the sense that they represent any great departure from what the Republican Party has been striving to do all the time.

But I think it is worth while to remind ourselves why we are a party, why we work: because then we work with greater enthusiasm, and far more than that: with greater effect.

I really believe that with the cause for which we have to work, with the material we have in this party, with the appeal we can make to youth, and with the kind of candidates that we can produce, we can sweep the country.