With you, I love this great land in which we live. I pray for the chief executive and his cabinet and the legislative and judicial branches, the officials of our states and our cities. But I wonder sometimes, my brethren and sisters, what our founding fathers, our pioneer fathers, would do and say if they were here today. I’m sure they would give serious reflection to present conditions. I wonder if they would not recognize that our liberties have already been abridged, that there has been too much of a tendency for us to call upon our federal government every time we felt the need for the accomplishment of any particular objective. I wonder if we haven’t had a tendency to call for help for those things which our forefathers would have done willingly for themselves. Yes, I presume as a people we are to blame, but I feel that if they were here today, they would apply some very definite tests before any new service or new program were approved. May I just mention three:

First, I think they would ask the question: Can this service, assuming it is needed, be done more efficiently, more effectively by our federal government or should we do it ourselves on the local level? They believed that government is best which governs least. Government seems to be inherently wasteful and inefficient. Possibly it is because the profit motive and competition—the very life of private enterprise—are largely absent.

Second, How will it affect the morale and the character of the people? This seems to me to be of great importance. They were interested in the building of character. They recognized that character, not wealth or power or position, is of prime consideration.

Third, they would possibly ask: How will it affect our free institutions—the church, the school, the home, and our local form of government?