Remarks Upon Receiving an Honorary Degree at the University of Rhode Island

Dr. Horn, Governor Chafee, Lieutenant Governor Folcarelli:

Rhode Island may be the smallest State in the Union, but it has given us some of our biggest men. One of them is my favorite keynoter, your most distinguished United States Senator, John Pastore.

I am grateful that I could be here with your junior Senator, Claiborne Pell, today, who is working so hard and so effectively to fill the shoes of that great, late, lamented statesman, Theodore Francis Green.

I am pleased that I should be accompanied by Congressman Fernand St. Germain, a man who has helped as much as any man in Congress to enact one of our most important bills, the demonstration cities bill, which will be one of our strongest weapons in our war on poverty in this Nation.

I am very pleased, too, to recognize a great many other distinguished and patriotic leaders who have come to be here with us on this campus this morning: Governor John King of New Hampshire, Governor John Volpe of Massachusetts, Senator George D. Aiken of Vermont (Senator Aiken is with us on his birthday), Senator Winston Prouty of Vermont, Governor Philip Hoff of Vermont, Senator Mike Mansfield, the distinguished majority leader from Montana and Mrs. Mansfield, Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, Senator Thomas McIntyre of New Hampshire and Mrs. McIntyre, our friend, Representative Robert Stafford of Rutland, Vermont, Representative Stanley R. Tupper of Boothbay Harbor, Maine, and Representative William Hathaway of Auburn.

It is a very special pleasure for me to be in this beautiful State. I have never come here without feeling your very special warmth, and I have never left here without real regret.

By now I seem to be something of a commuter, having campaigned here, having accepted two honorary degrees here, and having sent my heart here when the returns came in, in November 1964.

I want to speak to you this morning about our society--about some of the stress that it is undergoing and about what I believe that we must do if we are to preserve civil peace and if we are to serve social justice.

If there is a single word that describes our form of society in America, it may be the word "voluntary."

The American experience has been one long effort to open up new and better choices for our people. Generally, though not universally, we have succeeded. Most men are free to pursue any calling they choose, to do with their lives and their properties what they will.

The results are mixed, but the tremendous prosperity that we enjoy, and the personal liberty that we cherish, are at least good evidence that the American system seems to work.

Yet, that prosperity would soon collapse, and liberty would become a hollow word, if our people did not understand in their hearts that personal responsibility is forever bound to personal rights.

Most of us know this, believe it, prefer it, and practice it.

Most of us know that our own safety and our own well-being depend upon a fabric of responsibility woven between man and man. And where it is torn by violence or avarice or carelessness, each of us suffers-not the least him who failed in his responsibility toward the rest of us.

Because most people are fair and do not, as n moral matter, want to do harm or to take unfair advantage, the fabric of private responsibility holds fast.

Yet, our society grows more and more complex and the fabric is sometimes strained. Great forces are released that threaten to destroy it--forces of technology, of population growth, of immense and anonymous institutions. And as the prosperity of the majority becomes more evident, the poverty of the minority becomes more unbearable.

People who have been denied basic human rights for centuries begin to demand a share in the society. And the gap between what they want and what they have is boldly revealed. The proud assertions of our democracy are then challenged.

To many more fortunate people, the call of the poor minority for justice is the occasion for fear. They believe that it cannot be answered without depriving them of what they possess by birth or hard work. They see political rights and economic well-being as a cake whose size is constant. If the poor minority is granted a piece of it, the share of the affluent majority will be diminished.

In a sense, they are right. If one man-one king or dictator--holds all of the political power in a country, granting five people the right to vote and shape their destiny does reduce his power considerably. Granting that right to every man reduces it drastically.

Yet, we long ago decided that our concept of man's integrity required this sharing of political power. The majority ought to determine the course of the state. We are working now to make that possible in every part of our land--and we are doing it for the first time since slaves set foot on our soil. And we shall succeed. No power on this earth can prevent us.

Far more difficult, because it is far more widespread and complex, is the question of economic rights. We decided long ago that our economic system should not be controlled by government decree. We chose freedom in the marketplace, just compensation for all, and for all a chance to share in the country's wealth.

And if that share can be obtained through the free markets, so much the better. But where it is denied to some because of the wretched circumstances of their birth, or the poverty of their education, or the foul environment that surrounds them, the sickness that weakens and the despair that crushes them, we believe that the Nation should act.

We believe that just as a man has the right to choose those who shall govern the state, so does he have the right to live in a decent environment, so does he have the right to acquire the skills that useful work requires, and so does he have the right to secure and to hold a job despite the color of his skin, or the region of his birth, or the religion of his father.

There is a moral as well as a practical basis, I think, for this belief. One of the holy men of our years, Pope John XXIII, described it in a great message to mankind.

He wrote, "One may not take as the ultimate criteria in economic life the interests of individuals or organized groups, nor unregulated competition, nor excessive power on the part of the wealthy, nor the vain honor of the nation or its desire for domination, or anything of this sort. Rather, it is necessary that economic undertakings be governed by justice and charity as the principal laws of social life."

Justice and charity both demand that political and economic rights be granted. But justice and charity demand also that political and economic responsibilities be accepted.

For our society cannot maintain itself or guarantee justice and fairness to any man where only rights are acknowledged.

In the law courts, in the city halls and school boards, in Congress and in the White House, men are constantly trying to balance one man's rights fairly with another's. And this entire work of balancing--of seeking justice between men--rests on the acceptance of responsibility among men.

In our system of government ordinary men and women are required to behave in an extraordinary way. They can express their vigorous dislikes of politicians and policies, but they must allow others to express their equally vigorous approval. They can assert the right to shout, but they must concede to others the right not to listen.

So, men have the right to protest the condition of their lives, but they also have the responsibility not to injure the person or the property of others in making that protest.

Men have the right to seek work wherever they can find it, but they also have the responsibility not to deprive others of their livelihood by violence.

Men have the right to use the law, but they also have the responsibility to obey it.

This lesson has particular meaning for those who are filled with anger and frustration because of the deprivation of centuries-in our own country and throughout our own world.

No one needs the law more than they. Yet, to many, the law is the symbol of the society which they have been unable to enter--the protector of the status quo, the defender of those who have gouged, drained, persecuted, and who have denied them.

They seek to strike out against that society, to bring down the law that is its bulwark. Their mistrust of the law, and those it protects, is as deep as their despair, as profound as their frustration.

Now their demands, once whispered, have risen to a shout and no one who enjoys the benefit of our society can truthfully say that we have done enough to answer those demands. We have done much in our time; we have done much recently; we have done much in the last 3 years; we are willing to do much more; we know that we must do more. But still the vicious cycle of poverty persists, hobbling the human personality from generation to generation.

If a single act of government, or a single program or combination of programs, could break that chain overnight, I would recommend it to Congress within the hour of its discovery.

But the causes and the conditions of poverty are too deep, too various, too subtle, and too firmly interlocked for simple remedies. We deceive ourselves and we deceive the poor as well, if we imagine there is some magic sword, some system of Federal funds that can cut this chain and cut it with just one stroke.

Does this mean that we should not put new billions into schools and into health care and into housing? Of course it does not mean that.

What it does mean is that breaking the chain of poverty is going to require patience, time, and wise planning, and a degree of daring experiment, and the long-term commitment of our immense resources directed by our patriots of all parties and all classes.

It means that a major goal of Government must be to secure the right to social justice for all of our people--and for all of us to help these people fulfill that right. It means that our laws must be wise and their enforcement must be fair.

Yet, if all of these are forthcoming, as I genuinely believe they will be, it will avail us nothing if our society is torn and destroyed by violence and by discord.

The Molotov cocktail destroys far more than the police car or the pawn shop. It destroys the basis for civil peace and the basis for social progress.

The poor suffer twice at the rioter's hands: first, when his destructive fury scars their neighborhoods; and, second, when the atmosphere of accommodation and consent is changed to one of hostility and resentment.

The Negro American has made gains in the past decade behind the banner of peaceful protest. The fury of bigots and bullies to these gains has only served to strengthen the will of the American people that justice be done, because basically we are all a fair people in the United States of America.

The vivid contrast between lawful assemblies and lawless mobs has spurred America's conscience. And we have begun to act, at last, to open real opportunities for the Negro American, and other minorities, and to help them move to achieve those opportunities.

We shall continue, multiplying and enlarging our efforts as we go along. Yet, I warn you they can succeed only in conditions of civil peace. And civil peace can exist only when all men, Negro and white alike, are as dedicated to satisfying their responsibilities as they are dedicated to securing their rights.

For we are, after all, one nation. It is our destiny to succeed or to fail as a single people and not as separate races.

The great Rhode Islander, Roger Williams, described for us really what we are: "There goes many a ship to sea with many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and woe is common, and this is a true picture of a commonwealth, or a human combination or society."

Such was the society of Providence Plantations three centuries ago and such, I believe, is the society of America today.

Thank you so very much.