The speech itself does not measure up to the speeches of the greatest orators, like Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and William E. Borah[3], but it was exactly what was required to sway wavering Republican senators to vote “aye” to end the filibuster. Some parts of the speech were outstanding, however:
To those who have charged me with doing a disservice to my party–and there have been many–I can only say that our party found its faith in the Declaration of Independence, which was penned by a great Democrat, Thomas Jefferson by name. There he wrote the great words:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.That has been the living faith of our party. Do we forsake this article of faith, now that the time for our decision has come.
There is no substitute for a basic ideal. We have a firm duty to use the instrument at hand; namely, the cloture rule, to bring about the enactment of a powerful civil rights bill.
I appeal to all senators. We are confronted with a moral issue. Today let us not be found wanting in whatever it takes by way of moral and spiritual substance to face up to the issue and to vote cloture.You can read the entire speech here.
Can anyone imagine Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), the current majority leader of the Senate, delivering a speech approaching Dirksen’s in elegance, depth, moral power, and faith in the ideals upon which this nation was founded? Or that today’s Republican Congress would enact into law the great 1964 Civil Rights Bill, that reaffirmed and put teeth into the enforcement of those Constitutional rights granted equally to all citizens by the 14th Amendment? The idea that any Republican in today’s Senate would be willing to speak those words in public is laughable.
Times have changed. With few exceptions, politicians in power do not deserve the title of leaders or even epigons[4]. It is difficult to find a description that captures their abject subservience to wealthy campaign doners, their flagrant disregard for the welfare of the bottom 90% of their constituents, their rank dishonesty as to their own values and motives, and their willingness, nay, enthusiasm, in protecting persons high in the executive branch from accountability for their open and obvious corruption.
Enter Trump.
Donald Trump’s phony war against the media is waged for two purposes, which may even be unconscious, since he is not given to reflection:
- To dominate the media (including the press, TV networks, cable channels, and the Internet) by his antics to the degree that he sucks the oxygen out of other news. The media welcomes being manipulated that way, since it attracts viewers much like a freak show attracts visitors visiting the state fair.
- To sow mistrust of the media (except for Fox news). Trump mixes truth and falsehood with equal insincerity, a technique that induces brain fatigue and inhibits his viewers in distinguishing the difference between true and false. Fox, on the other hand, usually keeps its story straight, an impressive achievement, considering the alternative universe it has constructed. When you tell the truth you don’t have to remember what you said, but when you lie, you must remember everything you said to maintain the appearance of truth. Fox, whose political reporting is replete with false statements, manages to stay reasonably consistent, and it comes across to its viewers (most of whom are Trump supporters) as a voice of reason in a media world they have been manipulated into believing is “fake news.”
But back to Senator Dirksen. During his time in the Senate, Senators usually treated each other with respect. They argued vigorously, but gentlemanly. Almost always, they put nation above party. When the nation was under great stress, like the McCarthy era, or the Vietnam War, some of that comity went away, but it always seemed to return.
Comity began to deteriorate when Ronald Reagan assumed office. Shortly thereafter, Newt Gingrich, speaker of the House from Georgia, finished it off. He saw that polarization of the political space gave the Republicans an advantage and acted accordingly. The Democrats, grown complacent by the majority they held almost continuously from the end of WWII on, were unprepared for the onslaught.
The new Fox network, founded by Australian newspaper billionaire Rupert Murdoch, gave a loud voice to the Republican nastiness and lying that was directed against Democrats in the early nineties. In addition, right-wingers discovered AM radio as a cheap platform from which to spew their venom. The king of the spewers was Russ Limbaugh, whose daily two-hour program attracted millions of “ditto-heads,” as they called themselves, and promoted the right-wing cause among angry white males. As a vote-getting tactic, it worked. The Republicans seized control of the House and then the Senate and have controlled them almost continually up to the present.
The Republican drive in the ’90s culminated in the unsuccessful impeachment of President Bill Clinton near the end of his presidency by a Republican majority that clearly wanted to jerk power from a Democratic president and his party. The details and purported reasons for the impeachment I will omit, but the trial before the Senate was a solemn farce. Although Clinton was acquitted, it became obvious to anyone that paid attention that the system had become dysfunctional. The American People were bewildered by the rancor and the inability of either party to legislate without a solid majority and without shutting the minority party out of the decision-making process.
For those of us oldies that remember what it was like in the ‘60s and even the ‘70s, this is saddening. The younger generations of Americans, born after Ronald Reagan became president, have little conception of what life was like for the ordinary person living in the ‘50s through the ‘70s. I suspect that much of what we tell them about the past is often taken as the grousing of the elderly about how things were so much better in their youth. A little research into publicly-available records would reveal, however, that ordinary folk really were better off than they are today in almost every respect[5], and the change for the worse was the outcome of deliberate efforts by powerful people to bring it about. But that story is for another time.
As I was surfing through the Dirksen Center website, I came across a radio interview of Dirksen and Hubert Humphrey, the Senate majority leader, discussing the Civil Rights bill, soon to be voted on by the Senate. They were proud they were able to arrive at a document that satisfied almost everyone in the Senate other than the southerners, who bitterly opposed any legislation that might elevate the condition of southern blacks.
Dirksen and Humphrey had both served in the Senate for many years, and had developed a friendship that went beyond a mere business relationship. At the end of the interview, Senator Humphrey had the following to say:
SENATOR HUMPHREY: * * * Senator Dirksen and I will be formal for a moment. My friend, I want the people of Minnesota and the surrounding area to know that when we pass this civil rights bill, we will not only pass one that is workable and acceptable, rational and fair and enforceable, but one that I believe will make a great contribution to domestic peace and tranquility and justice in our country. And when that happens, you, sir, can claim–and you won’t but I will claim for you–a large measure of the credit for this achievement. It couldn’t be done without you, Everett, and I, for one, want to publicly express my respect and admiration for you and my sincere thanks for what I call service beyond the call of duty and putting country ahead of every other consideration.That says it all. As we would say here in Mississippi about our current Congress: “All those Senators and Representatives, didn’t their mothers bring them up to behave and treat everybody respectful?”
SENATOR DIRKSEN: I can say as much for you, my friend.
SENATOR HUMPHREY: Thank you, Everett.
I guess not.
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Senators have unlimited time to speak, but if a 3/5 majority of the Senate votes to invoke cloture, any further speeches are limited to 30 minutes. ↩
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I have searched for a video or audio recording of the senator’s speech, but to no avail. Dirksen’s speech was transcribed and appeared in the Congressional Record, which seems to be the source of all references to his speech on the Internet. Anyone that can direct me to an online source will have my eternal gratitude. The 1964 Congressional Record is not available on U. S Government websites. It can probably be found in libraries with a Federal Depository. ↩
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William Edgar Borah (b. 1865-d. 1940) was a Republican U.S. Senator from Idaho (1907–1940), and reputed to be one of the finest orators of his time. He was a small-government isolationist and too often employed his silver tongue in the service of doubtful or even evil causes in the name of states’ rights. ↩
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An epigone is an inferior follower or imitator, from the Greek word epigonos, one born after. In Greek mythology, they are the sons of the Argive heroes who had fought and been killed in the first Theban war. ↩
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Except for blacks, whose life improved during that time, but still fell far behind the standard of living that everyone else enjoyed. ↩
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