Where is our Calvin Coolidge?

Where is our Calvin Coolidge? September 6, 2016

We don’t need a president riding in on a white horse to solve our problems.  We don’t need a charismatic figure like John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan.  OK, I’d settle for a Reagan.  But what we really need is someone like Calvin Coolidge.

Our newspaper, the Daily Oklahoman, printed part of a Labor Day speech that Coolidge gave in 1924.  “Silent Cal,” by slashing taxes and cutting federal spending, presided over one of the largest economic expansions in American history.

What strikes me, though, in his speech, are his insights about work (or, as he calls it, “toil”), the dangers of dependency on the government, and how the main problem in America is always the character of its citizens.

Read the excerpts after the jump.  (I bolded the passages  that I thought particularly striking.)

From  Voters control their economic destiny in this election year | News OK

In a 1924 speech, Coolidge said, “I cannot think of anything characteristically American that was not produced by toil. I cannot think of any American man or woman pre-eminent in the history of our nation who did not reach their place through toil. I cannot think of anything that represents the American people as a whole so adequately as honest work. We perform different tasks, but the spirit is the same. We are proud of work and ashamed of idleness.”

Coolidge went on to note, “The door of opportunity swings wide open in our country. Through it, in constant flow, go those who toil. America recognizes no aristocracy save those who work. The badge of service is the sole requirement for admission to the ranks of our nobility.”. . .

“I want to see our institutions more and more humane,” Coolidge said. “But I do not want to see any of the people cringing suppliants for the favor of the government, when they should all be independent masters of their own destiny. I want to encourage business, that it may provide profitable employment. I want to see jobs hunting for men, rather than men hunting for jobs.”. . .

As Coolidge noted in his 1924 address, “To my mind America has but one main problem, the character of the men and women it shall produce. It is not fundamentally a government problem, although the government can be of a great influence in its solution. It is the real problem of the people themselves. They control its property, they have determined its government, they manage its business. In all things they are the masters of their own destiny. What they are, their intelligence, their fidelity, their courage, their faith, will determine our material prosperity, our successes and happiness at home, and our place in the world abroad.”

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