280 ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS

Ladies, you have been thrust upon the horns of a dilemma by those
who would project your image throughout the nation and the world.

Your role has been limited to shrew or siren, either of whom upon
marriage must become a saint. To fail to conform to the latter will
automatically place you in the category of the former — and this is
an unhappy and unjust and unreal place to be.

Yet while we may revel in the awkward poses in which the makers
and perpetuators of image have cast you, we cannot deny that what
people think of things, institutions and each other is often more per-
tinent to the affairs of men than truth itself. Our world is governed
by feelings and ideas and seldom, if ever, by certain knowledge.

Let us explore this subject of image with particular attention to the
image of our nation and that of the Republican Party.

Traditionally, the American people have been cast in the image of
frontiersmen facing a natural adversary, but today we are individuals
in search of ourselves in a world becoming inhumanly industrialized,
organized and computerized.

It is not the underabundance of material affluence which challenges
us but the complexities of coping with overabundance — great den-
sities of population and enormous prosperity confuse and frighten us.

The bread and circuses of the Great Society, like those of the once-
great Roman Republic, seem to drain the vigor from our spirit, mak-
ing us appear lazy, timid, effete, dependent and even apathetic The
evidence mounts daily that it is not the historic inevitability of Com-
munism which will defeat us but the philosophic disability of Democ-
racy that could destroy us.

The hue and cry over America's direction in recent years has been
heard from conservative critics in general and the Republican Party in
particular. But the most outspoken and most eloquent voice of dis-
approval has been that from what we may call the Liberal Establish-
ment. It is not Ronald Reagan but Arthur Schlesinger who sees an
America become, in his words, "like one big company town with the
bland leading the bland. " He bemoans a society which has lost sight
of itself, whose symptomatic drug is the tranquilizer and which
marches into the brave new world under the banner of togetherness.
"Conformity is the greater danger not when it is coerced but when
it is sought, " says Schlesinger, and he leaves no doubt as to the choice
contemporary America has determined for itself. Where is the spon-
taneity our society once knew? he asks. Why must the bright child
be sacrificed at the altar of mass education? Have the bold impre-