LBJ'S "GREAT SOCIETY"

After reading about all the "welfare queens" and "lack of responsibility" from the wingnuts over New Orleans, I thought it might be good to look at where things were almost 50 years ago. In 1959, the overall poverty rate was 22.4% and by 1969 it had decreased to 13.7%.

A large amount of that decline was due to Lyndon Johnson's decision in 1964 to move America toward a truly Great Society. Here's an excerpt from his speech in May 1964 at the University of Michigan:

The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.

The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. 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.

It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.

But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.