Bradley Ruzicka

As I indicated in a previous post titled A New Vision for America – 1965: A Turning Point?, I’m increasingly convinced that 1965 was the beginning of a decline in America’s belief and trust in the potential of its government to bring about positive change within this society, a decline that accelerated with the establishment of the conservative agenda in 1980. At the time many of the most significant accomplishments of the past fifty years were coming to fruition, the seeds of their downfall were simultaneously being planted. In one short year, we went from the heights of optimism regarding America’s collective future to a division within our society that persists to this day.

A period of three weeks between July 28 and August 11 1965 mark some of the most consequential days of the 1960s and represent the intersection of two competing series of events. On July 30 and August 6 respectively, Lyndon Johnson signed into law two of the most far reaching acts of the past fifty years, the Medicare / Medicaid act and the Voting Rights act. At the same time, on July 28, Johnson also announced a large and irrevocable escalation in the Vietnam War, one of the most divisive wars in American history since the Civil War and one whose aftereffects would forever tarnish the accomplishments of this period. And then, on August 11, a rebellion erupted in a suburb of Los Angles known as Watts effectively ending an all too brief period of bipartisan support in the area of civil rights.

In less than a year, how did we go from what LBJ called on December 18, 1964 “the most hopeful times in all the years since Christ was born in Bethlehem” to a profound distrust of progressive government and a seemingly irreconcilable gap between conservatives and liberals regarding public sector participation in resolving this country’s outstanding issues past, present, and future? I’ll attempt to explore this question in upcoming posts as I review these historic events and their impacts over the last fifty years.

In general, I believe a major contributor, if not the major contributor, to our current state of affairs has been, and continues to be, intolerance; an inability to consistently elevate the collective interest of our society over the individual interest of each of its citizens. As individuals we each tend to form opinions about events through the prism of our own interests and their impact on our daily lives. However, each individual’s willingness to transcend their own interests and come together in favor of society’s collective interest is what ultimately determines our ability to move forward as a nation.

John F. Kennedy once said “…let us not be blind to our differences – but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved”. Our focus shouldn’t be private versus public sector, black versus white, rich versus poor but rather our focus should be on utilizing the best our society has to offer in an on-going effort to collectively resolve our most pressing national issues. This I believe is the ideal and the essence of what has made the United States a great nation in past and can make us a great nation in the future; our willingness to overcome our individual differences in favor of our society’s common interests.

Or, to quote the late Mr. Spock from the movie Star Trek II, we would be wise to remember that “…the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one”!

I’ll end this post with a quotation and a video clip from the movie The American President. This film was released on November 17 1995 and portrays a fictional man named Andrew Shepherd struggling with the personal and professional responsibilities of being President of the United States. Now, I recognize the movie is intended as entertainment and, as such, it oversimplifies an extremely complex reality. In addition, we each can agree or disagree with the specific positions debated in the movie. Most important for me is the message that, instead of letting our individual differences divide us as a people, we need to acknowledge those differences, respect each other’s opinions as fellow citizens, and focus our energies not on making people afraid of the future but rather on achieving our common goals together as one nation.

I believe the following quotation from the movie’s climactic scene sums up both the difficulty and the promise of being a citizen of the United States!

As always, your feedback is appreciated!

“America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say “You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can’t just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the “land of the free”.”