September 17, 1952
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Attorney General, Mrs. Caldwell, ladies and gentlemen:
I am very happy to join in this celebration of Citizenship Day. This is the day on which we celebrate both the signing of the Constitution and what it means to be a citizen of the United States of America.
It was just this year that the Congress adopted legislation establishing Citizenship Day. This is the first time that we have observed it. I hope the ceremonies and the activities here today will launch an annual celebration that will increase in meaning and influence among our people as the years go by.
It pleases me very much to see here this group of men and women who will be admitted to United States citizenship this morning. I welcome them to the fellowship of the citizens who live under our flag; and I want to say something to them about the step they are going to take here today.
We are glad that you are about to join us. Millions of men and women before you, from all parts of the world, have taken the same path to become citizens of this great Republic.
Here you will be fellow citizens with people from other lands, some of them from countries which may have been hostile to your old homelands. But we expect our citizens to put aside those old nationalistic or racial feuds. They have no place here. We welcome you not to a narrow nationalism but to a great community based on universal ideals. Those universal ideals are the brotherhood of man and the welfare not only of our own country but the whole world besides.
We believe that all men have the same rights, and that these rights must be respected. We ask you to join with us in working to put into effect our basic ideals of tolerance, friendship, and equality. We ask you to help us defend this country against its enemies, and to join in our efforts to create a new day for the world--a day when there shall be real peace--peace based on the ideals of justice and human brotherhood.
For 7 long years I have spent my time and every effort of which I am capable to attain peace in the world, and while my term of office will end on the 20th day of January, I shall never cease to work for peace in the world--a real peace.
These are the ideals to which this Nation of immigrants dedicated itself 165 years ago when our Constitution was signed. These are the ideals which we are still striving-imperfectly at times, but with increasing success--to carry out in this wonderful country of ours.
This National Conference on Citizenship has always taken a deep interest in the problems of those immigrants in America. Today, it is more important than ever to continue that interest.
Our present laws on immigration and naturalization are not, in my opinion, good enough. In some respects they are unfair; in others, inadequate to meet the problems our country faces today.
I recently appointed a Presidential Commission on Immigration and Naturalization to make a study of our laws and national policies on this subject. I hope that you who are delegates to this Conference, and the organizations you represent, will do all you can to help the Commission in the important work it is undertaking.
These new citizens we are welcoming here today will have great responsibilities, as well as great opportunities, in this country. Whenever you have opportunities, you always have responsibilities.
Under our Constitution, the Government of the United States belongs to all the people, and they govern this Nation through their elected representatives. Our national programs and policies are formed by the use of our freedoms--by the competition of ideas and proposals that originate in labor unions, on the farm and in business groups, local governments, clubs and community organizations, and in the minds of individual citizens. The success of free government depends upon the willingness of the citizen to participate in it, to contribute to it, and to sacrifice for it.
Today, free government is under attack, all around the world. That fact should call forth our greatest loyalties. Free government needs our support. We cannot keep it unless we are willing to fight for it.
The great enemy of free government today is Soviet communism. The doctrines of communism are a slow poison that bit by bit eat away the moral fiber of the victim, and destroy the human soul. Communism is the enemy of free government because it destroys morality, which is the basis of freedom.
These immoral doctrines of communism now have the people of many nations in their grip. The leaders of Communist imperialism have marshalled men and resources in a great contest against free government. We must win that contest because we want to remain free. We never want the people of the United States to live. as the people of the Soviet Union live today.
In the Soviet Union, all the decisions are made by a small group of men at the top, and the people are told what they can think, where they can work, how they shall live. If they do not do as they are told, they are hustled off by the secret police to terrible concentration caps, where their life is slowly taken away by a system of forced labor.
We are not going to let those things happen here. That is why we have joined with other free nations to build up strong defenses. That is why we are defending ourselves against aggression in Korea. This means that many young Americans are having to serve in our Armed forces, and some of them are giving their lives. It means that our Nation is having to spend a great deal of money. But we shall continue our resistance to aggression because we know that is one of the things that must be done to protect our liberty.
The greatest danger of communism comes from the outside, in the shape of threats of force, aggression, and war. But communism never gives up its efforts to weaken other nations from within. It seeks to use all the weapons of propaganda--to stir up and confuse the people; and it also seeks to place its hidden agents in positions of trust and power.
In this country we have been waging a relentless fight against this internal attack of communism. And as a result, communism inside this country has been badly beaten.
The danger that communism might gain political power here through the ballot box no longer exists. The high point of the Communist Party in American politics was in 1932, when people were so miserable they would listen to any quack who promised a way out of the depression. In the presidential election of 1932 the Communist Party polled over 100,000 votes. Today its membership is less than 25,000 in a possible voting population of over 90 millions.
The chief reason the Communist Party has been losing strength in this country is because our democratic society has been successful in meeting the needs of our people. Every step we have taken to make living conditions better, to protect individual rights and human dignity, has been a setback for communism. By attacking hunger, poverty, and disease, we have been doing away with the conditions on which communism grows.
Moreover, we have been vigilant against subversion. The leaders of the Communist Party have been prosecuted by the Government in the courts. The top leadership has been jailed. Lesser leaders are now on trial, and some have already been convicted.
Communism has not only been beaten as a political force; it has been driven out of trade unions, and other organizations. Our union members deserve a lot of credit for the way they have driven out and isolated the handful of Communists in the labor movement.
In the Government service, our loyalty program stands as a firm barrier to Communist infiltration. The FBI is continually on the alert to track down and frustrate the Communist spy.
In all these ways, we are making our country safe against the internal threat of communism.
When we talk about the internal threat of communism, it is important to understand clearly what we mean. The Communist conspiracy is a definite and disciplined group of people who are fanatically dedicated to carrying out the purposes of the Soviet Union. These people can be identified, isolated, and prosecuted in many cases, and rendered harmless.
But this group does not include everybody we disagree with. We are not engaged in an effort to stamp out differences of opinion, but to root out a conspiracy. People who confuse innocent persons with Communists are not helping to make our Nation secure. They are simply creating a smoke screen behind which the real conspirators can find refuge. They are simply muddying the waters and making the real Communists harder to detect.
The groups and organizations represented here can do a great deal to put a stop to this sort of confusion. It is your job to make the ideals and principles of Americanism clear to our citizens, particularly to the young people.
The success of our institutions depends on a clear understanding of what our democracy is, what its foundations are, where it is strong and where it is weak. Free government is based not only on morality, it is also based on reason.
Among the greatest dangers to free government in this country are lack of knowledge, lack of civic responsibility--ignorance and apathy and perversion of the truth. I would like to talk about a few of these internal dangers to free government.
The first of them is ignorance of our institutions. I know that many of you here are educators and teachers, and that you are working night and day to explain to our young people what our Government stands for and how it works. And yet it is surprising, in spite of all these efforts, how much ignorance there is.
Thirty-five percent of our people who voted in 1948 did not know that each State has two Senators. One public opinion poll showed that 50 percent of the people do not even know who their own Congressman is. What price fame ? A survey in one of our great cities in 1950 showed that 75 percent of the people did not know the name of any congressional candidate on any ticket. This is the kind of ignorance we must stamp out if our way of life is to be secure.
Another great danger we face is apathy or indifference. The extent to which our citizens ignore the right to vote is appalling. In 1950, just 2 years ago, only 44 percent of our eligible voters went to the polls. Think of that. Less than half of our eligible citizens exercised one of the most treasured rights on earth.
We must not be complacent about this. Most other democratic nations do far better than we do in this line. The percentage of voters is higher in England, in France, and in dozens of other countries that I could name.
I hope we do much better in this election year. Americans should realize that their welfare, and the future welfare of this country, depend on the President they elect and the kind of men that they send to Congress.
Of course, it is not enough just to go to the polls and vote. They do that in the Communist countries--in fact, they have to do it or go to jail. The point of voting is to exercise an intelligent choice. This means that every citizen must try to inform himself on the great problems of the day, to get the facts and debate them.
Similarly, it is the duty of our political parties and our candidates to go before the people with the facts.
Now, there are various ways of doing this, and some of these are more dramatic and interesting than others. But in a democracy, everyone engaged in politics has a duty--a moral duty--to try to keep public debate reasonable and based on a fair discussion of the issues.
That brings me to another danger which threatens our democracy from within, and that is the "big lie." The "big lie" is a weapon of political warfare which was developed by the Communists and perfected by Hitler, and is now being used on a worldwide scale by the Soviet Union.
The technique of the "big lie" consists of two things. It consists first of making a charge against one's opponents which is frightening and horrible and so extreme that nobody could believe that a decent person would make it if it were not true. Hitler explained this very clearly. He said that if a lie is bold enough people will think there is some truth in it because it would never occur to them, in their own experience, to lie on such an exaggerated scale.
The second part of the "big lie" technique is to keep repeating the lie over and over again, ignoring all proof to the contrary.
The "big lie" technique is immoral and subversive. It is not a weapon which democratic society can afford to use. It violates the rules of the political game which underlie our constitutional form of government. It violates them in just the same way that riot and revolution violate them.
We have no place for this sort of thing in America. If we permit its use, our constitutional form of government can be destroyed. It is a tool used by Hitler and Stalin, and it is just as un-American as they are.
Unfortunately, there is a tendency in this country today to resort to the use of the "big lie" in order to reap personal and partisan advantage. It is a "big lie," for example, to say that we tolerate Communists and other disloyal persons in our Government. It is a "big lie" to attack one of the greatest generals and patriots whom this country ever had and call him a traitor.
A man who uses the weapon of the "big lie" is not a good man. He should be rejected by all good citizens, regardless of party. Partisan feeling often runs high in election campaigns. That is understandable. But it should not lead us to permit the use of this dangerous Communist technique in American politics.
These are some of the dangers that threaten our Government from within today. I am sure that we will overcome them. I am sure that the work of this Conference will help overcome them, and will lead to a better understanding and a wider exercise of the precious rights of American citizenship.
I hope you will have a splendid meeting here in Washington, and I know that the good you do here will radiate out through all the organizations represented in this Conference from all parts of this great country of ours. I appreciate very highly what you are doing, and I hope that you will carry on your splendid work, not only this year, but every year in the future, and every day, from day to day, as we go along.
Thank you very much.
NOTE: The President spoke at 10:45 a.m. at the Hotel Statler in Washington. In his opening words he referred to Justin Miller, Chairman of the Conference, James P. McGranery, the Attorney General, and Mrs. Sarah G. Caldwell, president of the National Education Association.
The seventh National Conference on Citizenship was held in Washington, September 17-19, under the auspices of the National Education Association and the Department of Justice.
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Attorney General, Mrs. Caldwell, ladies and gentlemen:
I am very happy to join in this celebration of Citizenship Day. This is the day on which we celebrate both the signing of the Constitution and what it means to be a citizen of the United States of America.
It was just this year that the Congress adopted legislation establishing Citizenship Day. This is the first time that we have observed it. I hope the ceremonies and the activities here today will launch an annual celebration that will increase in meaning and influence among our people as the years go by.
It pleases me very much to see here this group of men and women who will be admitted to United States citizenship this morning. I welcome them to the fellowship of the citizens who live under our flag; and I want to say something to them about the step they are going to take here today.
We are glad that you are about to join us. Millions of men and women before you, from all parts of the world, have taken the same path to become citizens of this great Republic.
Here you will be fellow citizens with people from other lands, some of them from countries which may have been hostile to your old homelands. But we expect our citizens to put aside those old nationalistic or racial feuds. They have no place here. We welcome you not to a narrow nationalism but to a great community based on universal ideals. Those universal ideals are the brotherhood of man and the welfare not only of our own country but the whole world besides.
We believe that all men have the same rights, and that these rights must be respected. We ask you to join with us in working to put into effect our basic ideals of tolerance, friendship, and equality. We ask you to help us defend this country against its enemies, and to join in our efforts to create a new day for the world--a day when there shall be real peace--peace based on the ideals of justice and human brotherhood.
For 7 long years I have spent my time and every effort of which I am capable to attain peace in the world, and while my term of office will end on the 20th day of January, I shall never cease to work for peace in the world--a real peace.
These are the ideals to which this Nation of immigrants dedicated itself 165 years ago when our Constitution was signed. These are the ideals which we are still striving-imperfectly at times, but with increasing success--to carry out in this wonderful country of ours.
This National Conference on Citizenship has always taken a deep interest in the problems of those immigrants in America. Today, it is more important than ever to continue that interest.
Our present laws on immigration and naturalization are not, in my opinion, good enough. In some respects they are unfair; in others, inadequate to meet the problems our country faces today.
I recently appointed a Presidential Commission on Immigration and Naturalization to make a study of our laws and national policies on this subject. I hope that you who are delegates to this Conference, and the organizations you represent, will do all you can to help the Commission in the important work it is undertaking.
These new citizens we are welcoming here today will have great responsibilities, as well as great opportunities, in this country. Whenever you have opportunities, you always have responsibilities.
Under our Constitution, the Government of the United States belongs to all the people, and they govern this Nation through their elected representatives. Our national programs and policies are formed by the use of our freedoms--by the competition of ideas and proposals that originate in labor unions, on the farm and in business groups, local governments, clubs and community organizations, and in the minds of individual citizens. The success of free government depends upon the willingness of the citizen to participate in it, to contribute to it, and to sacrifice for it.
Today, free government is under attack, all around the world. That fact should call forth our greatest loyalties. Free government needs our support. We cannot keep it unless we are willing to fight for it.
The great enemy of free government today is Soviet communism. The doctrines of communism are a slow poison that bit by bit eat away the moral fiber of the victim, and destroy the human soul. Communism is the enemy of free government because it destroys morality, which is the basis of freedom.
These immoral doctrines of communism now have the people of many nations in their grip. The leaders of Communist imperialism have marshalled men and resources in a great contest against free government. We must win that contest because we want to remain free. We never want the people of the United States to live. as the people of the Soviet Union live today.
In the Soviet Union, all the decisions are made by a small group of men at the top, and the people are told what they can think, where they can work, how they shall live. If they do not do as they are told, they are hustled off by the secret police to terrible concentration caps, where their life is slowly taken away by a system of forced labor.
We are not going to let those things happen here. That is why we have joined with other free nations to build up strong defenses. That is why we are defending ourselves against aggression in Korea. This means that many young Americans are having to serve in our Armed forces, and some of them are giving their lives. It means that our Nation is having to spend a great deal of money. But we shall continue our resistance to aggression because we know that is one of the things that must be done to protect our liberty.
The greatest danger of communism comes from the outside, in the shape of threats of force, aggression, and war. But communism never gives up its efforts to weaken other nations from within. It seeks to use all the weapons of propaganda--to stir up and confuse the people; and it also seeks to place its hidden agents in positions of trust and power.
In this country we have been waging a relentless fight against this internal attack of communism. And as a result, communism inside this country has been badly beaten.
The danger that communism might gain political power here through the ballot box no longer exists. The high point of the Communist Party in American politics was in 1932, when people were so miserable they would listen to any quack who promised a way out of the depression. In the presidential election of 1932 the Communist Party polled over 100,000 votes. Today its membership is less than 25,000 in a possible voting population of over 90 millions.
The chief reason the Communist Party has been losing strength in this country is because our democratic society has been successful in meeting the needs of our people. Every step we have taken to make living conditions better, to protect individual rights and human dignity, has been a setback for communism. By attacking hunger, poverty, and disease, we have been doing away with the conditions on which communism grows.
Moreover, we have been vigilant against subversion. The leaders of the Communist Party have been prosecuted by the Government in the courts. The top leadership has been jailed. Lesser leaders are now on trial, and some have already been convicted.
Communism has not only been beaten as a political force; it has been driven out of trade unions, and other organizations. Our union members deserve a lot of credit for the way they have driven out and isolated the handful of Communists in the labor movement.
In the Government service, our loyalty program stands as a firm barrier to Communist infiltration. The FBI is continually on the alert to track down and frustrate the Communist spy.
In all these ways, we are making our country safe against the internal threat of communism.
When we talk about the internal threat of communism, it is important to understand clearly what we mean. The Communist conspiracy is a definite and disciplined group of people who are fanatically dedicated to carrying out the purposes of the Soviet Union. These people can be identified, isolated, and prosecuted in many cases, and rendered harmless.
But this group does not include everybody we disagree with. We are not engaged in an effort to stamp out differences of opinion, but to root out a conspiracy. People who confuse innocent persons with Communists are not helping to make our Nation secure. They are simply creating a smoke screen behind which the real conspirators can find refuge. They are simply muddying the waters and making the real Communists harder to detect.
The groups and organizations represented here can do a great deal to put a stop to this sort of confusion. It is your job to make the ideals and principles of Americanism clear to our citizens, particularly to the young people.
The success of our institutions depends on a clear understanding of what our democracy is, what its foundations are, where it is strong and where it is weak. Free government is based not only on morality, it is also based on reason.
Among the greatest dangers to free government in this country are lack of knowledge, lack of civic responsibility--ignorance and apathy and perversion of the truth. I would like to talk about a few of these internal dangers to free government.
The first of them is ignorance of our institutions. I know that many of you here are educators and teachers, and that you are working night and day to explain to our young people what our Government stands for and how it works. And yet it is surprising, in spite of all these efforts, how much ignorance there is.
Thirty-five percent of our people who voted in 1948 did not know that each State has two Senators. One public opinion poll showed that 50 percent of the people do not even know who their own Congressman is. What price fame ? A survey in one of our great cities in 1950 showed that 75 percent of the people did not know the name of any congressional candidate on any ticket. This is the kind of ignorance we must stamp out if our way of life is to be secure.
Another great danger we face is apathy or indifference. The extent to which our citizens ignore the right to vote is appalling. In 1950, just 2 years ago, only 44 percent of our eligible voters went to the polls. Think of that. Less than half of our eligible citizens exercised one of the most treasured rights on earth.
We must not be complacent about this. Most other democratic nations do far better than we do in this line. The percentage of voters is higher in England, in France, and in dozens of other countries that I could name.
I hope we do much better in this election year. Americans should realize that their welfare, and the future welfare of this country, depend on the President they elect and the kind of men that they send to Congress.
Of course, it is not enough just to go to the polls and vote. They do that in the Communist countries--in fact, they have to do it or go to jail. The point of voting is to exercise an intelligent choice. This means that every citizen must try to inform himself on the great problems of the day, to get the facts and debate them.
Similarly, it is the duty of our political parties and our candidates to go before the people with the facts.
Now, there are various ways of doing this, and some of these are more dramatic and interesting than others. But in a democracy, everyone engaged in politics has a duty--a moral duty--to try to keep public debate reasonable and based on a fair discussion of the issues.
That brings me to another danger which threatens our democracy from within, and that is the "big lie." The "big lie" is a weapon of political warfare which was developed by the Communists and perfected by Hitler, and is now being used on a worldwide scale by the Soviet Union.
The technique of the "big lie" consists of two things. It consists first of making a charge against one's opponents which is frightening and horrible and so extreme that nobody could believe that a decent person would make it if it were not true. Hitler explained this very clearly. He said that if a lie is bold enough people will think there is some truth in it because it would never occur to them, in their own experience, to lie on such an exaggerated scale.
The second part of the "big lie" technique is to keep repeating the lie over and over again, ignoring all proof to the contrary.
The "big lie" technique is immoral and subversive. It is not a weapon which democratic society can afford to use. It violates the rules of the political game which underlie our constitutional form of government. It violates them in just the same way that riot and revolution violate them.
We have no place for this sort of thing in America. If we permit its use, our constitutional form of government can be destroyed. It is a tool used by Hitler and Stalin, and it is just as un-American as they are.
Unfortunately, there is a tendency in this country today to resort to the use of the "big lie" in order to reap personal and partisan advantage. It is a "big lie," for example, to say that we tolerate Communists and other disloyal persons in our Government. It is a "big lie" to attack one of the greatest generals and patriots whom this country ever had and call him a traitor.
A man who uses the weapon of the "big lie" is not a good man. He should be rejected by all good citizens, regardless of party. Partisan feeling often runs high in election campaigns. That is understandable. But it should not lead us to permit the use of this dangerous Communist technique in American politics.
These are some of the dangers that threaten our Government from within today. I am sure that we will overcome them. I am sure that the work of this Conference will help overcome them, and will lead to a better understanding and a wider exercise of the precious rights of American citizenship.
I hope you will have a splendid meeting here in Washington, and I know that the good you do here will radiate out through all the organizations represented in this Conference from all parts of this great country of ours. I appreciate very highly what you are doing, and I hope that you will carry on your splendid work, not only this year, but every year in the future, and every day, from day to day, as we go along.
Thank you very much.
NOTE: The President spoke at 10:45 a.m. at the Hotel Statler in Washington. In his opening words he referred to Justin Miller, Chairman of the Conference, James P. McGranery, the Attorney General, and Mrs. Sarah G. Caldwell, president of the National Education Association.
The seventh National Conference on Citizenship was held in Washington, September 17-19, under the auspices of the National Education Association and the Department of Justice.