The new freedom : $b a call for the emancipation of the generous energies of a peopleWilson, Woodrow
History
The new freedom : $b a call for the emancipation of the generous energies of a people
Wilson, Woodrow
United States -- Politics and government -- 1913-1921; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918
So the first and chief need of this nation of ours to-day is to include in
the partnership of government all those great bodies of unnamed men who
are going to produce our future leaders and renew the future energies of
America. And as I confess that, as I confess my belief in the common man,
I know what I am saying. The man who is swimming against the stream knows
the strength of it. The man who is in the mêlée knows what blows are being
struck and what blood is being drawn. The man who is on the make is the
judge of what is happening in America, not the man who has made good; not
the man who has emerged from the flood; not the man who is standing on the
bank looking on, but the man who is struggling for his life and for the
lives of those who are dearer to him than himself. That is the man whose
judgment will tell you what is going on in America; that is the man by
whose judgment I, for one, wish to be guided.
We have had the wrong jury; we have had the wrong group,--no, I will not
say the wrong group, but too small a group,--in control of the policies of
the United States. The average man has not been consulted, and his heart
had begun to sink for fear he never would be consulted again. Therefore,
we have got to organize a government whose sympathies will be open to the
whole body of the people of the United States, a government which will
consult as large a proportion of the people of the United States as
possible before it acts. Because the great problem of government is to
know what the average man is experiencing and is thinking about. Most of
us are average men; very few of us rise, except by fortunate accident,
above the general level of the community about us; and therefore the man
who thinks common thoughts, the man who has had common experiences, is
almost always the man who interprets America aright. Isn't that the reason
that we are proud of such stories as the story of Abraham Lincoln,--a man
who rose out of the ranks and interpreted America better than any man had
interpreted it who had risen out of the privileged classes or the educated
classes of America?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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