powerful forces
will take us beyond the bounds
of imagination

Adapted from the line:

Within your lifetime powerful forces, already loosed, will take us toward a way of life beyond the realm of our experience, almost beyond the bounds of our imagination.

The line comes from the Commencement Address at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on May 22, 1964, delivered by President Lyndon Johnson.

It is an address known to history as the “Great Society Speech.”

According to Wikipedia the Great Society was “New major spending programs that addressed education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, and transportation were launched during this period. The program and its initiatives were subsequently promoted by him and fellow Democrats in Congress in the 1960s and years following. The Great Society in scope and sweep resembled the New Deal domestic agenda of Franklin D. Roosevelt.”

LBJ said:

Within your lifetime powerful forces, already loosed, will take us toward a way of life beyond the realm of our experience, almost beyond the bounds of our imagination.

For better or for worse, your generation has been appointed by history to deal with those problems and to lead America toward a new age. You have the chance never before afforded to any people in any age. You can help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the Nation.

So, will you join in the battle to give every citizen the full equality which God enjoins and the law requires, whatever his belief, or race, or the color of his skin?

Will you join in the battle to give every citizen an escape from the crushing weight of poverty?

Will you join in the battle to make it possible for all nations to live in enduring peace — as neighbors and not as mortal enemies?

Will you join in the battle to build the Great Society, to prove that our material progress is only the foundation on which we will build a richer life of mind and spirit?

There are those timid souls who say this battle cannot be won; that we are condemned to a soulless wealth. I do not agree. We have the power to shape the civilization that we want. But we need your will, your labor, your hearts, if we are to build that kind of society.

Those who came to this land sought to build more than just a new country.

They sought a new world.

So I have come here today to your campus to say that you can make their vision our reality.

So let us from this moment begin our work so that in the future men will look back and say: It was then, after a long and weary way, that man turned the exploits of his genius to the full enrichment of his life.

Over 50 years later it seems like “soulless wealth” is winning out.

Going back to the speech, for better or for worse, this generation has been appointed by history to deal with those problems and to lead America toward a new age.

We have the chance never before afforded to any people in any age.

We can help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the Nation.

We can.

We can?

Can we?

grievous consequence
what has been done and undone
futile intentions

It is the most grievous consequence which we have yet experienced of what we have done and of what we have left undone in the last four years.

Four years of futile good intentions.

Four years of eager search for the line of least resistance.

Four years of uninterrupted retreat of US power.

Four years of neglect of US defenses.

Those are the features which I stand here to declare and which marked an improvident stewardship for which the United States has dearly to pay.

We have been reduced in those four years from a position of security so overwhelming and so unchallengeable that we never cared to think about it.

We have been reduced from a position where the very word “war” was considered one which would be used only by persons qualifying for a lunatic asylum.

We have been reduced from a position of safety and power.

Power to do good.

Power to be generous.

Reduced in four years from a position safe and unchallenged to where we stand now …

This is paraphrased and adapted for today’s affairs of the world from a speech by Winston Churchill.

Mr. Churchill delivered his speech has part of the British Parliamentary Debate on the Munich Agreement on October 3, 1938.

Mr. Churchill was speaking about Great Britain and France and the efforts of the governments of those countries to maintain peace in Europe with Nazi Germany.

Those two countries working with Germany and France had signed an agreement that pretty much dissolved the country of Czechoslovakia and made it a part of Hitler’s Germany in the hope Hitler would be happy.

I adapted what Mr. Churchill to what the United States seems to face abroad after four years of the current administration of the Government of the United States.

I understand what the governments of Great Britain and France were trying to do.

I fail to understand.

I cannot grasp what the current administration is trying to do.

Mr. Churchill said:

“It is the most grievous consequence which we have yet experienced of what we have done and of what we have left undone in the last five years-five years offutile good intention, five years of eager search forthe line of least resistance, five years of uninterruptedretreat of British power, five years of neglect of our air defences. Those are the features which I stand here to declare and which marked an improvident stewardship for which Great Britain and France have dearly to pay. We have been reduced in those five years from a position of security so overwhelming and so unchallengeable that we never cared to think about it. We have been reduced from a position where the very word “war” was considered onewhich would be used only by persons qualifying fora lunatic asylum. We have been reduced from a position of safety and power–power to do good, power to be generous to a beaten foe, power to make terms with Germany, power to give her proper redress for her grievances, power to stop her arming if we chose, power to take any step in strength or mercy or justice which we thought right-reduced in five years from a position safe and unchallenged to where we stand now….“

authors, yourselves of
those laws on which your (and my)
happiness depends

Mr. Samuel Adams, the cousin of John Adams, not the beer, said in a speech in Philadelphia on August 2, 1776, the day the Declaration of Independence was signed, that:

Nothing that we propose can pass into a law without your consent.

Be yourselves, O Americans, the authors of those laws on which your happiness depends.

I have to feel that Mr. Adams, if alive today, would read the papers and watch the news and say to himself, “something went wrong here.”

Or maybe not.

Maybe Mr. Adams would say, “Gee Whiz, I WARNED YOU.”

All these issues.

We did it to ourselves.

But I have a hope in Mr. Adams’ closing thoughts.

“Go on, then, in your generous enterprise, with gratitude to heaven, for past success, and confidence of it in the future.“

Confidence of it in the future.

Maybe it is a curse.

But I still feel it.