GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR SPEAKS

 

"Belatedly the American people are beginning dimly to sense that, emerging from World War II, are two dynamic and irreconcilable forces striving for mastery—the free world and international Communism."

"The foundation stones of this nation are the concepts and principles of the Judeo-Christian traditions and faith. Americans are free men. Their first allegiance is to their Creator—a Creator who endowed them with unalienable rights and an immortal end. Being free men it has been and is all but impossible for Americans to comprehend the basic tenets of international Communism, namely that people—human beings—are without individual entity or worth; that men are mere pawns, chattels, slaves of the State; that the State is without geographical location; that it has no national boundaries; that it encompasses the world."

"History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual reawakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster."

"It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh."

"No man in the world is more anxious to avoid the expansion of war than I. I am a one hundred per cent disbeliever in war. The enormous sacrifices that have been brought about by scientific methods of killing have rendered war a fantastic and impossible method for the solution of international difficulties."

"In war, as it is waged now, with the enormous losses on both sides, both will lose."

"The implacable guide must be faith in those unchangeable principles and ideals which give spiritual strength to our Constitution."

"In the modern world, the evil forces of Communism seek to remove religion as the most formidable barrier to their advance."

"It is not of any external threat that I concern myself but rather of insidious forces working from within which have already so drastically altered the character of our free institutions—those institutions which formerly we hailed as something beyond question or challenge—those institutions we proudly called the American way of life.

"Foremost of these forces is that directly, or even more frequently indirectly, allied with the scourge of imperialistic Communism. It has infiltrated into positions of public trust and responsibility—into journalism, the press, the radio and the schools. It seeks through covert manipulation of the civil power and the media of public information and education to pervert the truth, impair respect for moral values, suppress human freedom and representative government and, in the end, destroy our faith in our religious teachings.

"This evil force, with neither spiritual base nor moral standard, rallies the abnormal and subnormal elements among our citizenry and applies internal pressure against all things we hold decent and all things that we hold right—the type of pressure which has caused many Christian nations abroad to fall and their own cherished freedoms to languish in the shackles of complete suppression.

"Our need for patriotic fervor and religious devotion was never more impelling.

"There can be no compromise with atheistic Communism—no half-way in the preservation of freedom and religion. It must be all or nothing."

"There are those who seek to convert us to a form of socialistic endeavor leading directly to the path of Communist slavery. As a counter-balance to those forces is the deep spiritual urge in the hearts of our people—a spiritual urge capable of arousing and directing a decisive and impelling public opinion. This, indeed, is the great safeguard and resource of America. So long as it exists we are secure for it holds us to the path of reason. It is an infallible reminder that our greatest hope and faith rests upon two mighty symbols—the Cross and the Flag; the one based upon those immutable teachings which provide the spiritual strength to persevere along the course which is just and right—the other based upon the invincible will that human freedom shall not perish from the earth. These are the mighty bulwarks against the advance of those atheistic predatory forces which seek to destroy the spirituality of the human mind and to enslave the human body."

"We must unite in the high purpose that the liberties etched upon the design of our life be unimpaired and that we maintain the moral courage and spiritual leadership to preserve inviolate that might bulwark of all freedom, our Christian faith."

"Could I have but a line a century hence crediting a contribution to the advance of peace, I would gladly yield every honor which as been accorded by war."

"Undue paternalism in government tends to sap the creative potential and impair initiative and energy in those who thereby come to regard governmental subsidy as n inalienable right."

"The preservation, inviolate, of the economic system based upon free, private, competitive enterprise alone maximizes the initiative, the energy and in the end the productive capacity of the people."

"Under no circumstances must Formosa [Taiwan] fall under Communist control. Such an eventuality would at once threaten the freedom of the Philippines and the loss of Japan, and might well force our western frontier back to the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington."

"The peoples of the world will only follow our leadership upon the basis of our moral integrity and spiritual as well as physical strength. They will measure us not by the monies we recklessly give them, but by the general attitudes with which we face the common problems of mankind."

"A great nation which enters upon war and fails to see it through to victory must accept the full moral consequences of defeat."

"It is difficult to ask men to fight and die unless we give them a realistic mission and means to accomplish it."

"Never before in our history can precedent be found for such a subordination of policy to the opinions of others with a minimum regard for the direction of our own national interest. Never before have we geared national policy to timidity and fear."

"The national administration has been and is under a control characterized by narrow vision and overriding personal ambition. The power of government was used as a political leverage to obtain more and greater centralization of authority.. Political greed became the dominant factor in government and the fortunes of the political party of the administration began to receive primary consideration over and above the public interest.

"Laws and clearly defined precedents which obstructed this concentration of power were brushed aside and the democracy of representative government began to yield to the concept of governmental autocracy. In the ensuing movement toward the ascendancy of men over laws, the meaning and intent of the Constitution became rapidly corrupted."

"Propaganda was the mighty weapon through which control was sought. The people were first brought to a state of bewilderment and confusion through the agitation among the masses of fear and misunderstanding. Then followed a mighty effort to inject upon the American scene a system of mass thought control—a plan which failed of success only because of the rugged individualism still characteristic of the American people. Time and again in their innate wisdom they have sensed the tragic errors inherent in our misguided public policy. They have demanded changes, not only in policy, but in responsible appointive officials. But such demands have gone unheeded and men who have lost the public confidence have arbitrarily been protected in their exercise of the power of government.

"Grievous, indeed, have been the blows at the very roots of the concept that government is 'of the people, by the people and for the people.'"

"It is not from threat of external attack that we have reason for fear. It is from those insidious forces working from within. It is they that create the basis for fear by spreading false propaganda designed to destroy those moral precepts to which we have clung for direction since the immutable Declaration of Independence became the great charter of our liberty.

"This campaign to pervert the truth and shape or confuse the public mind with its consequent weakening of moral courage is not chargeable entirely to Communists engaged in a centrally controlled world wide conspiracy to destroy all freedom. For they have many allies, here as elsewhere who, blind to reality, ardently support the general Communist aims while reacting violently to the mere suggestion that they do so."

"There are those who subvert morality as the means to gain or entrench power. There are those who, believing themselves liberals, chart a course which can but lead to destruction. There are those cynically inclined whose restless impulse is ever seeking change. There are those who are constantly trying to alter our basic concepts of freedom and human rights. There are those who seek to prevent man from fearlessly speaking their minds according to the dictates of their conscience. There are those who plan to limit our individual right to share in the sovereign power of the people.

"There are those who seek to subvert government from being the guardian of the people's rights, to make of it an instrument of despotic power.

"There are those who plan to alter the constitutional checks and balances established to preserve the integrity of our coordinate branches. There are those who seek to make the burden of taxation so great and the progressive increase so alarming that the spirit of adventure, tireless energy and masterful initiative which built the material strength of the nation shall become stultified and inert. There are those who seek to make all men servants of the State. There are those who seek to change our system of free enterprise which, whatever its faults, commands the maximum of energy and human resource and provides the maximum of benefits in human happiness and contentment.

"Government has assumed progressively the arrogant mantle of oligarchic power, as the great moral and ethical principles upon which our nation grew strong have been discarded or remolded to serve narrow political purposes."

"Whether it be by accident or design, such policy, formulated with reckless indifference to the preservation of constitutional liberty and our free enterprise economy, coupled with the rapid centralization of power in the hands of a few, is leading us toward a Communist state with as dreadful certainty as though the leaders of the Kremlin themselves were charting our course. It implements the blueprints of Marx and Lenin with unerring accuracy and gives stark warning that, unless the American people stem the present threatening tide, human liberty will inevitably perish from our land."

"End invisible government based upon propaganda and restore truly representative government based upon truth."

"We do desire to retain our traditional friends and allies in Europe; but such an alliance must rest upon spiritual bonds fabricated from a mutuality of purpose and a common heritage of principle—not an alliance to be secured at a price."

"Our leaders must throw off the complacent belief that the only threat to our survival is from without. All freedoms lost since war's end have been the result of internal pressures rather than external assault."

"Our government now differs substantially from the design of our forefathers as laid down in the Constitution. They envisaged a federation of sovereign states with only such limited power resting in the federal authority as became necessary to serve the common interests of all. But under the stress of national emergencies during the past two decades, there has been a persistent and progressive centralization of power in the Federal Government with only superficial restoration to the States and the people as emergencies subsided.

"This drift has resulted in an increasingly dangerous paternalistic relationship between Federal Government and private citizen, with the mushrooming of agency after agency designed to control the individual. Authority specifically reserved to the States by constitutional mandate has been ignored in the ravenous effort to further centralize the political power."

"This drift toward totalitarian rule is reflected not only in this shift toward centralized power, but as well in the violent manner in which exception is taken to the citizen's voice when raised in criticism of those who exercise the political power. There seems to be a determination to suppress individual voice and opinion, which can only be regarded as symptomatic of the beginning of a general trend toward mass thought control. Abusive language and arbitrary action, rather than calm, dispassionate and just argument, ill becomes the leadership of a great nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to a course of morality and justice. These pressures have already caused us to depart sharply from the course so long held toward national strength and moral greatness.

"Our economic stature built under the incentives of free enterprise is imperiled by our drift through the back door of confiscatory taxation toward State Socialism."

"Expenditure upon expenditure, extravagance upon extravagance have so burdened our people with taxation and fed the forces of inflation that our traditionally high standard of life has become largely fictitious and illusory. Apart from the direct income tax impounded at source, every necessity of life gives constant warning of the diminishing value of both national currency and private income."

"As always, it is the great masses of the people, not the rich or prosperous, but the farmer, the laborer, and the average office worker who suffer the most.

"Some of these penalties are now obscured by the reckless extravagance of government spending which creates a false sense of security, but the day of reckoning is inevitable and understanding and fear of this injects a tragic apprehension in the American mind. Yet our leaders offer neither plan nor hope for a return to frugality and reason. Our remaining tax potential has been so depleted that, if the reckless policies of government continue unchecked, the direct confiscation of capital to meet the ensuing obligations is almost inevitable."

"For Socialism, once a reality, destroys that moral fiber which is the creation of freedom. It breeds every device which produces totalitarian rule."

"The great bulwark of the Republic, individual and collective self-reliance, is under constant threat through a carefully designed and progressive paternalism which renders both community and individual increasingly dependent upon the support of the Federal Government. In all areas of private welfare, the Socialist planners seek to inject the Federal hand to produce a progressive weakening of the structure of individual character."

"More and more we work not for ourselves but for the State. In time, if permitted to continue, this trend cannot fail to be destructive. For no nation may survive in freedom once its people become the servants of the State, a condition to which we are now pointed with dreadful certainty."

"It is argued that we must give boundlessly if we are to be assured allies in an emergency. I reject this reasoning as an unwarranted calumny against well tested friends of long standing."

"Without committing a single soldier to battle, the Soviet has assumed direct or indirect control over a large part of the population of the world. His intrigue has found its success, not so much in his own military strength nor, indeed, in any overt threat of intent to commit it to battle, but in the moral weakness of the free world."

"We must rebuild our power not so much as a measure of defense against any imminently threatened attack, but as a means to regain the faith of those peoples of the world—traditional friends of our country—who now languish in the chains of Communist slavery or whose wills are controlled by Communist threat, treachery, coercion and brutality and to whom only the relativity of force longer has practical meaning."

"Battles are not won by arms alone. There must exist above all else a spiritual impulse—a will to victory. This can only be if the soldier feels his sacrifice is to preserve the highest moral values. And we should understand that once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end.

"War's very objective is victory—not prolonged indecision. In war, indeed, there can be no substitute for victory."

"Let us regain some of the courage and faith of the architects who charted the course to our past greatness. Let us look up as befits the most powerful nation on earth, both spiritually and physically.

"Let us tell all that while firmly and invincibly dedicated to the course of peace, we will not shrink from defending ourselves if the alternative is slavery or some other form of moral degradation.

"Let us proudly reassume our traditional role of readiness to meet and vanquish the forces of evil at any time and any place they are hurled against us. Let us make clear our eagerness to abolish the scourge of war from the face of the earth just as soon as others are willing to rise to so noble a stature with us. Let us renew our reverence for the blood of our sons and strike with all the power we can mount to support and protect those who now fight our battles in distant lands. And above all else let us regain our faith in ourselves and rededicate all that is within us to the repair and preservation of our own free institutions and the advance of our own free destiny."

"In short, is American life of the future to be characterized by freedom or by servitude, strength or weakness. The answer must be clear and unequivocal if we are to avoid the pitfalls toward which we are now heading with such certainty. In many respects it is not to be found in any dogma of political philosophy but in those immutable precepts which underlie the Ten Commandments."

"We stand today at a critical moment of history—at a vital crossroad. In one direction is the path of courageous patriots seeking in humility but the opportunity to serve their country; the other that of those selfishly seeking to entrench autocratic power. The one group stands for implacable resistance against Communism; the other for compromising with Communism. The one stands for our traditional system of government and freedom; the other for a Socialist State and slavery. The one boldly speaks the truth; the other spreads propaganda, fear and deception. The one denounces excessive taxation, bureaucratic government and corruption; the other seeks more taxes, more bureaucratic power, and shields corruption.

"The people, as the ultimate rulers, must choose the course our nation shall follow. On their decision rests the future of our free civilization and the survival of our Christian faith.

"Not for a moment do I doubt the decision or that it will guide the nation to a new and fuller greatness."

 

~ from Revitalizing a Nation, by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, 1952