Remarks at the LBJ Liberty and Justice for All Dinner
Sen. Levin's remarks as prepared for delivery
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Lynda (JOHNSON ROBB), Luci (JOHNSON), thank you so much for this award, and thank you for all that you and the LBJ Foundation do to preserve your father’s legacy and make his democratic vision a vital source of ongoing inspiration.
Jack (REED), thank you so much for that introduction, and for all those trips together. I know you will be an outstanding leader on the Armed Services Committee – even though I’d sleep a little better if you were chairman.
John Dingell and I have spent a lot of time together on stages these past few weeks, and received many honors. Surely this is one to treasure. To be a progressive lawmaker is to stand in the shadow of Lyndon Baines Johnson, and to be seen as upholding his legacy is truly humbling.
It’s especially meaningful to me that LBJ delivered his soaring vision for a Great Society in our state, and in fact in John’s district. It was in a commencement speech at the University of Michigan in 1964. In that speech, he described the Great Society this way: “It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.”
The idea of community is central to understanding LBJ’s accomplishments. A man extraordinarily sensitive to barriers of race and inequality and isolation, his vision was of an America whose spirit of innovation and hunger for progress drove not just our economy, but our quest for inclusion. The Great Society was a vision of active government seeking to create a stronger American community, one less fractured by differences of race and disparities of income, education and opportunity.
And he didn’t just want to talk about these issues. He believed government could, and should, act on them. He once told an aide he never thought he would have the power to effect the changes America needed, but now that he had it, he said, “I’m going to use it.”
I think this is the lesson of his success, and the lesson of FDR’s success with the New Deal. These visionaries teach us that despite our weaknesses and flaws and divisions, we can with vision and determination make use of the power our people have conferred upon us; that we can come together as a democratic people to seek progress, to comfort the afflicted, to heal divisions and broaden opportunities.
President Johnson knew that not all would heed his call. He told the graduates that day in Michigan: “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.”
His ideal is every bit as much contested today as it was then. But it is also every bit as necessary. Today, we see educational opportunity threatened. We see economic inequality that is by some measures even more staggering than the inequality that drove LBJ to act, inequality driven by tax loopholes serving no purpose but to allow a wealthy elite to unload their tax burden on to working people.
There are those who believe we are powerless against the forces of division and the crush of inequality. I reject these notions, just as President Johnson rejected them.
I reject them because we can offer relief to women who earn 75 cents for a dollar’s worth of work. We can offer equality to those who seek only to love as their hearts command. We can make a good education for every child a national imperative. We can narrow the yawning chasm between the fortunate few and the struggling many. We can act to strengthen our society, and we can do so because, as LBJ showed us, government can help heal the fissures that weaken our nation.
From the earliest days of our democracy, those of us elected to serve have stood on the shoulders of giants who came before us. All of us today who view this democracy as a vehicle for progress surely stand on the shoulders of Lyndon Baines Johnson. I am grateful for the example he set, and for the lives touched by his vision of a better America. And I am deeply honored to accept this award bearing his name.
Thank you.