Lyndon B. Johnson photo

Remarks to Students Participating in the U.S. Senate Youth Program

February 05, 1965

First I want to welcome you here to the first house of the land. It is your house and you give me much pleasure when you take time and come and see us and give us a chance to visit together.

I know of nothing that is more helpful to me or more stimulating or invigorating than to have a chance to associate and rub shoulders with the young people in our high schools and in our colleges and throughout our country.

I am especially proud of you and the leadership of the Hearst organization that brought you here. For many years--I've been in public service now 34 years, in Federal service and before that I worked for the schools and the States; all of my life I've been with one branch or the other of our Government--the thing that I have wanted to do most when I could do it, either when I got out of public office, was retired voluntarily or involuntarily, would be to try to arrest and inspire and promote young people's interest in their Government.

I am very indebted to the leadership of the Hearst organization. And I'm very envious that they are doing what I have wanted to do and what I hope to do when I am no longer in public life.

I met here one day in the Oval Room above us--the beautiful yellow room Mrs. Kennedy now has redecorated and one of the most exciting places in the White House--with President Roosevelt when he was in his wheelchair there behind his desk. And he said, "I want you to know that I have just accepted an invitation for you to keynote a national convention of young people in Louisville, Ky., and I have already prepared your speech for you."

Well, I was comforted to know that if I had to speak to a convention I had my speech all ready for me, but I had no advance warning that I was even going to be invited.

I said, "Fine, Mr. President, when is it and what do you say in your speech?"

He said, "Our system of government is the most important thing we really have in this country for our future, and because I think it is a superior system and better than most systems I think it must be preserved. I have not the slightest doubt that it will be preserved, provided our young people become as fanatical and as dedicated about democracy and our system as the young Nazis are about their system, because they have been worked up in a feverish lather and Hitler has them feeling very strongly that they have a mission in the world. If our people can just become as excited and as dedicated and as interested about their system, I know that we will not only be a match but we will be the victor."

That is what I went down there to say and I believe it was 1940, a year before we were involved in the war, maybe 2 years.

So today I want to remind you of something that I use very frequently and the reporters who are here probably get tired of hearing me, but I won't see you but just this one time and this statement has impressed me a lot.

We were a republic in Texas before we were a part of the Union. We were a separate country. We had a president and his name was Lamar. One of the things that we remember most about President Lamar was his great determination to develop our education system in our State. We were determined to have a university of the first class; that is the way they referred to it. We were determined to educate our young and in connection with his leadership back there, prior to 1836, he said this: "Education is the guardian genius of democracy."

Mr. Theodore Roosevelt said that the President is the steward of all the people. I like that expression. He has a responsibility to all of them to do what is fight and protect them all, the rich and the poor, the wise and the ignorant, all of them.

But Mr. Lamar, the President of the Texas Republic said, "Education is the guardian of democracy. It is the only dictator that free men recognize and the only ruler that free men require."

Now this is a part of the best education that can ever come to you: to come here and look at that monument to George Washington and to Thomas Jefferson and to Abraham Lincoln, and to reflect on what they endured and the sacrifices they made and the education that they brought about that was the guardian of our democracy.

A hundred years ago Abraham Lincoln was signing the Emancipation Proclamation. And it was a proclamation but it wasn't a fact. We all are working today to see that it is a fact--to see that regardless of our religion, or the color of our skin, or where we live, or what State we come from, or how we spell our name, we have the protection of our Bill of Rights and our Constitution. And the dignity of man is uppermost in our thoughts--and the freedom of the individual is the basic requirement of every American, and fair and equal opportunities under our laws.

But because I happen to come from Texas is no reason why you ought to hold it against me. Or because I am tall or short, or because I am a Democrat or a Republican, or because I am brown from the south Texas sun or because I have been bleached with the snowcapped mountains of some of our Western States.

It is not important how you spell your name or what country your ancestors came from or what the color of your skin is. What is important is that every boy and girl born in this world will have equal opportunity under our system.

What other system would permit the son of a tenant farmer who was born in a 3-room house 56 years ago to become President of the land? That is what we want to preserve, and you are going to help because of your knowledge of it and, as President Roosevelt said, your fanaticism for it and your love for it and your dedication for it.

So now I have talked too long, but I do think we must remember what he said about our future depending upon our own feeling about our Government and our dedication and our love for it and our fighting for it.

You remember they said we could not produce the planes required to save us in World War II. They said these beardless boys will never be able to take these B-17's and fly them into the industrial areas and destroy them, and carry the atomic bombs, and these and other things.

But these beardless boys 17, and 18, and 19 became the great aces of the land. And it was, first, being sure of the education that was their guardian genius. But it was also their fanaticism, their love of freedom in this country, that caused them to fly all night, to cross the oceans, and to go under the seas.

Mr. Hearst, if he were living today, would be very proud that his name was associated with an interest in government that he exemplified until his last day on this earth. Your parents ought to be mighty proud and your President is proud that you have enough interest to come here and to learn about it and to go back and talk to other people about it. Because that education is the only dictator that we are going to have in this country and it is the only ruler we are going to have. And then we are going to let the majority will work its way and we are going to abide by it.

Oh, we have so many exciting things to do in the rest of our lives. Yesterday, Lady Jackson--Barbara Ward--had lunch with me--a very great person, she had just come from Africa. She said she had talked to a number of people in this country and she was quite excited. She thought today, more than any period that she had ever observed, people were more hopeful about making our land beautiful, were more anxious to be a part of a better education program, a better health program, a better conservation program, a better equal rights program, and a better program to beautify nature than we had ever been before.

She had all these encouraging things from people she had talked to. They were all excited. The garden clubs are wanting to help make their city prettier, the junk dealers are even helping us get the old cars off the roads. We are thinking about planting wild flowers all over the country in the spring so when we take our families out and drive we can see the beauties of nature.

I have a conservation message I have just been working on and I was talking about it with a group before I came in here to see you. I have to get it up in the next few days very quickly and I want all of you to read it if you can because there are things to do. There is work to do for Republicans, for Democrats, for southerners, for northerners, for Easterners, for Westerners, and there will be differences and there will be arguments and there will be debates and sometimes my viewpoint will prevail and sometimes somebody else's viewpoint will prevail. What is important is that we will debate them and discuss them and act on them and we will move forward and this country will be better in the year 2000 than it is in 1965. At that time most of you will be just 50 or 55 like I am today and you can look back and see how much progress we made from the time you were here until then.

I am indebted to the Hearst people. I am indebted to each State and to each family represented for giving me the opportunity to mix with you and see you. I am going to stay a little longer, I want to visit and shake hands with those I haven't.

I notice Mrs. Johnson is here. She doesn't like to make speeches but I want you to know her. This is my wife Lady Bird.

Note: The President spoke at 11:50 a.m. in the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House. The group included 102 high school students who were participants in the U.S. Senate Youth Program sponsored by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation.

Lyndon B. Johnson, Remarks to Students Participating in the U.S. Senate Youth Program Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/240694

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