As a baby-boomer looking at retirement and social security in another decade, I find myself fairly alone in appreciating how that system dramatically reduced the largest group in poverty, the elderly poor. How do I know this history? Nearly 40 years ago, my university in Terre Haute invited a leading socialist to speak. I was a young college kid from rural Indiana and thought socialists were just weak communists, so I am not sure why I ended up in an auditorium seat, perhaps to hear a crazed advocate of a failed political policy.
As the house lights went down, an aide escorted the elderly man to the podium, and I am afraid I remember thinking, "Good grief, blind and feeble too!"
And then he took ahold of the podium.
Norman Thomas was one of perhaps two or three great orators I have heard in my lifetime. In spite of illness and age, he had a commanding but gentle voice full of compassion and drive to action. Defying his obviously weak condition, Thomas spoke for more than an hour as the sparse audience of students was spellbound.
Our stereotypes of radical socialists rapidly evaporated. Unemployment insurance. Minimum wage laws. The five-day work week. Child labor laws. These were just some of the ideas he had championed. Norman Thomas had helped found the American Civil Liberties Union and had long advocated for civil rights. And now it was the 1960s and many laws he had worked for were coming to pass.
When my classmates left the auditorium that night, we were not converted to socialism. But we were much less provincial. The world wasn’t simple anymore.
Norman Thomas died a year later. But a handful of students that heard him that night lived on. We were young then, and not very concerned about social security. Now we are concerned, as politicians try to seduce us into gambling our future on the stock market. We need Norman Thomas back...and that isn’t going to happen. It is our battle now.
And that is what universities are for: to help the young generation challenge provincial ideas, to breed controversy, to tolerate opposition, to carry on the intellectual fight.
There is a battle going on today in academia. Conservative academics are turning up their protests that many universities are nests of liberal dissident professors, suppressing traditional values, and promoting political correctness and multiculturalism. Well, ideas and values should not be suppressed; but we desperately need the dissidents...and tolerance.
Perhaps we can take a page from the American icon of commonsense, Will Rogers, who famously said: "I never met a man I didn’t like." Few realize who he was actually talking about. According to a November 26, 1926 issue of the Saturday Evening Post, this comment was in response to a reporter’s question about Leon Trotsky, the firey Communist revolutionary. Will Rogers replied: "I bet that if I had met him [Trotsky] and had a chat with him, I would have found him a very interesting and human fellow, for I never met a man that I didn’t like."
Thanks to Indiana State University in 1968, I got to meet Norman Thomas...and I liked him.
kanu-normanthomas2
As a baby-boomer looking at retirement and social security in another decade, I find myself fairly alone in appreciating how that system dramatically reduced the largest group in poverty, the elderly poor. How do I know this history? Nearly 40 years ago, my university in Terre Haute invited a leading socialist to speak. I was a young college kid from rural Indiana and thought socialists were just weak communists, so I am not sure why I ended up in an auditorium seat, perhaps to hear a crazed advocate of a failed political policy.
As the house lights went down, an aide escorted the elderly man to the podium, and I am afraid I remember thinking, "Good grief, blind and feeble too!"
And then he took ahold of the podium.
Norman Thomas was one of perhaps two or three great orators I have heard in my lifetime. In spite of illness and age, he had a commanding... but gentle voice full of compassion and a drive to action. Defying his obviously weak condition, Thomas spoke for more than an hour as the sparse audience of students was spellbound.
Our stereotypes of radicalism rapidly evaporated. Unemployment insurance. Minimum wage laws. The five-day work week. Child labor laws. These were just some of the ideas he had championed. Norman Thomas had helped found the American Civil Liberties Union and had long advocated for civil rights. And now it was the 1960s and many laws he had worked for were coming to pass.
When my classmates left the auditorium that night, we were not converted. But we were much less provincial. The world wasn’t simple anymore.
Norman Thomas died a year later. But a handful of students that heard him that night lived on. We were young then, and not very concerned about social security. Now we are concerned, as politicians try to convince us to gamble our future on the stock market.
Today we are seduced into thinking that decisions are made by each person conducting extensive research into every political issue of the day, and that just isn’t going to happen. We need champions. Persons of intellectual power who can comprehend the complexities and the human costs. Speakers who can translate this complexity into the best course of action...and energize us into action.
Too many generations have gone by. We are distanced from the time of the elderly poor; we must avoid that history again.
The tragedy of this time is not so much that we are repeating an old debate, but that the arguments are so mechanical and self-centered. It is not enough to know what to do. It is necessary to have a champion...to get it done.
