54 ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS

At the highest levels of government, in the highest courts of our
land, laws are being enacted and decisions are being rendered which,
while not always popular, are pertinent to man's quest for dignity and
man's effort to preserve that dignity. But where the quest has failed,
where it has not reached, where it must finally turn to turn our times
around, is in the area of individual human initiative and collective
private action.

The complaint has been heard that government and its accompany-
ing bureaucracy of organization and mediocrity of accomplishment
infringes upon the private prerogative and ambition to accomplish
meaningful goals. But when we retrace the progress of man's emer-
gence as a social, economic and political equal, we find that what
motivates public involvement is private apathy, that what prompts
government interference is private neglect, that what causes the govern-
ment to act is the deliberate unwillingness of free men to find cures
and effect solutions on their own.

While decisions of the court are made to be followed, while laws
are enacted to be obeyed, the true estimate of their importance to our
society is how they motivate the individual citizen to capitalize and
enlarge upon his purpose.

Laws passed are not necessarily laws observed. Decisions made are
not always decisions obeyed. The sanction of authority and the means
to its enforcement can be imposed upon a society and receive back
begrudging servitude and stubborn contempt. It is only when the
private citizen finds in law and decision the clear reflection of his
social, moral and spiritual ethic that the cause of human advancement
is realistically, tangibly and creatively served.

What practical progress can there be in the areas of employment,
housing, education and human renewal when our people resist com-
mand or indulge it stoically? How can we ever expect to remove blight,
poverty, pollution and ugliness from our lives when the government
is willing, but the citizen is not; when the State House is willing but
the household is not; when the law is there but the spirit is not?

Good laws do not make good men. Good resolves do not make good
deeds. Having something done for us rarely measures up in quality
or reward to doing that something ourselves.

Let us use law as a basis for action and not as an excuse for the
lack of it. Let us use legislation as a basis for progress and not as a
substitute for the lack of it. Let us use our freedom to help others
achieve theirs.