William Penn Life, 1976 (11. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
1976-04-01 / 2. szám
Remarks Of Lt. Governor Kline part of corporations and bureaucracies, greater economic justice to wage earners, greater cooperation between responsible citizens in every racial group, greater use of our cultural traditions in our schools and a new approach to politics. Ethnic people make possible great progressive victories in American politics. I know this state, and I know that every progressive politician who ever carried Pennsylvania had to do it by winnhg great majorities in the ethnic neighborhoods of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Without you there is no progressive politics in Pennsylvania. So you owe it to your forebearers to continue their tradition. Traditions of justice, equality, fairness, compassion and liberty. Seeking such values they left their native land, disappointed by the injustices they faced in America, they struggled to make America true to her promises. Their struggles in America did not end with the immigrant generation. The struggles they began for a fair share have not been concluded. Their great and heroic contributions to America are not at an end. It falls to us in the second, third, fourth, and fifth generation to produce new leaders to carry on the fight. Since the great migrations of the 1880's our ancestors have been assimilating America. Now it is time for America to assimilate us. America does not yet include in its consensus our ideas, values, and energies to the degree we have earned and deserved. Until American culture includes the culture of our families, and our traditions and our politics and our morality and our dreams and our works of art, it is not complete. What we must do now is organize ourselves, exert ourselves and act using every legal means available to us. I would like to see a new politics dedicated to the family and the neighborhood, to equality and fairness. Some Americans are individualists. Essentially they seek their own welfare first. Others are “family people.” For them the first unit of concern is the family. What helps, what injures it. In our society, corporations, government and the media have been devastating to family people. Almost everything about jobs, work conditions, government programs, the tax system, and the images projected by the media ignores the needs of families; injures families. Despite these assaults upon the family, the majority of us honor marriage and the family The family is the chief souce of our nourishment and joy. It is in the family that we learn our ethnic traditions and respect for honest work. Parents teach more at home than they get credit for from professional educators. In fact, it is the family that most affects success in schools in the first place. Children learn to read at home, not in school. They learn basic calculations there, habits of reading and inner discipline. It is in the family that moral values quietly and silently become an unshakable part of us - honesty, obedience, respect for others, manners, courage, civic responsibility. We need political leaders and social strategists who understand the needs of families today, who see how thoughtless change, media, schools, working conditions, junk foods and economic uncertainities are paralyzing many families. When families break down, the structure of society disintegrates. What families leave undone, social institutions can try to repair but only at enormous expense. If we want this country to regain its health, I believe that respect for family values is a good place to begin. If we can get back to having the family do what it used to do and is supposed to do, government won't cost us so much and won’t interfere so much with our lives. There has been a lot of unnecessary and disruptive social engineering in this country and a lot of the public programs to help people haven’t helped, they have hurt. Part of the problem has been that the experts never bothered to try and understand the people or to ask their opinions. They have tried to force change without public support, against the will of the people and even against common sense. For a while, people were intimidated. They didn’t feel right about what was being done but they let the university experts and the government experts try their experiments. After all, all that education must count for something. Well, in the last few years we have come to realize that a lot of that education doesn’t amount to anything, because it is not based on an understanding of any of our history, our culture, our people, and it is devoid of common sense about feelings and values. It is time to reverse all that, strengthen our democratic institutions and get them to reflect the will of the majority. We have bent over backwards long enough to let others practice their social theories on us. And we have paid a heavy price in tax dollars and in erosion of the quality of life. It is time to put the wage-earning, tax-paying, law-abiding citizen back in the driver’s seat. The man on the street and his imagination are just as important in making the future. The man with the briefcase has no greater claim to America than the man with the lunch pail. It is time to follow public policies that will preserve and protect the family unit - the source of our real strength. So as America faces the decades ahead, we must see to it that the family gets the central concern it deserves. That is a difficult challenge to all of us, but it is worth our effort. As long as I am in public life, I intend to be guided by that principle. I feel so strongly about this that when I became chairman of the State Bicentennial Commission, I suggested making the family the major theme for our Bicentennial celebration and that is exactly what we have done. And if someone objects to our year-long celebration of 200 years of freedom because they feel it is tiresome or commercial, well, remind them there are a lot of countries in the world where there is no freedom that you have to celebrate. So we'll celebrate because a lot of us are only a couple of generations away from tyranny. We’ve only been able to read free newspapers, vote in free elections, engage in free political discussions and freely worship our God for less than a century. We don’t think America is perfect and we know that there are lots of improvements that have to be made. But our families sacrificed everything to come to this country and it took daily courage to survive after they got here. In those days, nothing was being given away for nothing. All they had was the freedom to work hard, and by such work to climb up, out of the slum. America gave us a chance: So, hell yes, we’ll celebrate. And being here is all the reason we need ! Thank you. WILLIAM PENN LIFE Official Publication of the William Penn Association Editor in Chief; ELMER CHARLES; Associate Editor, ALBERT J. STELKOVICS; Assistant to the Editor, JULIUSE SOMOGYI. Editor’s Office and Office of Publication: 429 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, Pa., 15219; Tel. 412-281-8950. Published Quarterly: January, April, July , October. Postmaster: If undelivered please send Form 3579 to: WILLIAM PENN ASSOCIATION, 429 Forbes Ave.. Pittsburgh, Pa., 15219. Second class postage paid at Pittsburgh, Pa. and at additional mailing offices.______________________ 10
