This page is about the Utopian Vision of Lyndon Johnson: Utopia, LBJ’s Great Society

   Utopia is a word for the ideal society. The word itself was invented by Sir Thomas More (1478-1535). It refers to an imaginary society and culture where life is ideal and people are content. Many authors have written books describing what an ideal society would look like. Plato proposed his vision of a Republic. Sir Thomas More gave the concept a name in his Utopia.
   A few utopian societies have actually been founded, like New Harmony, Indiana, which was proposed by Robert Owen in 1824. This paradise was abandoned after only four years, ironically, because its residents quarreled continuously. Its ambitious architecture (right) was never constructed. Nueva Germania was a Utopian experiment conducted by Germans in Paraguay. “New Germany” was a small colony founded in 1888 by Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche (sister of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche) and her husband Bernhard Förster. They wanted to create a “racially pure” Aryan paradise. The small, underfunded, colony consisting of 18 families of German immigrants, deteriorated into a very dirty and unsatisfactory paradise. The jungle proved to be difficult farm land. Aryan idealism was overcome by mosquitoes, disease, dirty water, and heat. In despair, Bernhard Förster committed suicide, leaving his wife to her fate. Elisabeth returned to Germany, leaving her colonists to their fates. The inhabitants of Nueva Germania melted into the surrounding culture and their children became Spanish-speaking Paraguayans with German names. Their descendants still live in the area, but the ruins of Nueva Germania itself have collapsed back into the jungle. (Ben MacIntyre wrote a fascinating book on Nueva Germania entitled Forgotten Fatherland.)
   The very word “Utopia” has come to refer to “an impractical scheme for social improvement.”

   Despite its unsuccessful track record to date, the concept of “Utopia” is a very useful one. It raises some provocative questions in our minds. What would be the ideal culture and society? Presumably, a Utopian society would be one where no change of any kind is desired. Every institution in Utopia would be highly functional. It would be well governed. Old problems - poverty, racism, lack of health care, religious conflicts, pollution, etc. - would have been long resolved and forgotten. New problems would occur infrequently and would be resolved efficiently. Conflict between citizens of Utopia would be handled by the disputants or by wise mediators with dispatch. The trains would run on time, crops would flourish, prices would be affordable, and the population of Utopia would be stable. The distribution of income would be pretty flat and most of the products of Utopian factories would be accessible by all. Utopian citizens would be well educated. Governmental services would tend to the infrastructure of Utopia, keeping the roads, water purification plants, electrical power grids, and airports in excellent condition. The citizenship of Utopia would be articulate and active in government, entertainment, literature, and social affairs.

The Great Society: The Utopian Vision of Lyndon Johnson

   Only one President in American history actually tried to make his vision of Utopia a reality and that man was Lyndon B. Johnson. He became President in 1963 on the day that President John Kennedy was murdered. He called his evolving legislative program “The Great Society.” Johnson’s domestic agenda was unfortunately pushed aside by his increasing preoccupation with the war in Vietnam, which America ultimately lost. Johnson declined to run for reelection in 1968, discouraged and defeated. Richard Nixon was elected to succeed him. America lost not only the war in Vietnam, but we lost the emerging vision of Johnson’s great society. Johnson was not a philosopher, a political scientist, or a saint. He was a political genius who could make Congress work more efficiently than any man in our history. He was also a frugal steward of the nation’s resources; the national debt was about the same when he left office as it was when Kennedy came to office. The rights and entitlements that many Conservative voters take for granted were hatched in the brain of Lyndon Johnson and hammered into our laws by Congressmen who agreed with his vision or who feared his anger.
   While the Johnson Administration has been declared a failure by many Conservatives and Liberals alike, we think that there are valuable lessons to be learned from reading and thinking about Lyndon Johnson. We also think that Johnson’s Administration will be reassessed by historians in a more positive way in a generation or two, as was Harry Truman’s.

“If the American people don't love me, their descendants will.” - LBJ

   Great men usually have big flaws in their characters, and Johnson is a superb example of this generalization. He was hyper-ambitious, brutal to his employees, controlling, stubborn, vain, coarse, crude, vulgar, crooked, and vengeful - a character sketch that could be applied to more than one modern day politician.
   He probably fixed the election that brought him to the Senate in 1949. His twelve-vote victory margin in that election and unanswered questions surrounding the mysterious ballot box of Precinct 13 in Alice, Texas earned him the enduring nickname “Landslide Lyndon.” (That ballot box was not discovered until six days after the election and no one knows where it was for the time that it was missing. It seems that the voters of Alice arrived at the polling place - amazingly and improbably - in alphabetical order, and they signed the precinct voter list accordingly.)
   Johnson was brutal to his critics. He used the FBI to investigate and intimidate innocent people. He listened to recordings that were made of the phone calls made by Martin Luther King and others via illegal wiretaps. To Johnson, opponents to his administration and his Vietnam policies were traitors and probably Communists.
   However, let us remember that Johnson’s character also had many strengths and many virtues, and every life in America is better off because of Johnson’s accomplishments. LAP does not idealize LBJ, but if Liberalism had saints we would have to canonize Lyndon Johnson, warts and all.
   Elsewhere on these pages we will list Johnson’s many big accomplishments and his few big failures, but here we are concerned only with the emerging vision of a Liberal Utopia that can be gleaned from Johnson’s Great Society policies. His was the third effort by Liberal Presidents to transform our nation and our world. Johnson’s was the most ambitious, the most comprehensive, and the most successful. He was fortunate to lead the nation in a time of prosperity, unlike Franklin Roosevelt, who came to the office during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Johnson was also fortunate that events brought to power a Congress that he could control, unlike Harry Truman, whose Fair Deal policies were stiff-armed and sabotaged by shortsighted Representatives and Senators of both parties.
   To prepare his agenda, Johnson assembled 14 working groups of government specialists and respected scholars to make recommendations in areas of agriculture, antirecession policy, civil rights, education, efficiency and economy, foreign economic policy, health, income maintenance policy, intergovernmental fiscal cooperation, natural resources, pollution of the environment, preservation of natural beauty, transportation, and urban problems.

   (The key points of Johnson’s “Great Society” vision were outlined in three great speeches. Below is a summary of the main ideas presented by Johnson. The quotations are drawn from these speeches but are presented out of context and not in their original order. We think that our summary below is an honest one, but you can read the speeches in their entirety  here.)

Characteristics of the Great Society

“We built this Nation to serve its people. We want to grow and build and create, but we want progress to be the servant and not the master of man. We do not intend to live in the midst of abundance, isolated from neighbors and nature, confined by blighted cities and bleak suburbs, stunted by a poverty of learning and an emptiness of leisure. The Great Society asks not how much, but how good; not only how to create wealth but how to use it; not only how fast we are going, but where we are headed.”

• The Great Society is first and foremost a Great Democracy. “I propose that we eliminate every remaining obstacle to the right and the opportunity to vote.” “It is wrong - deadly wrong - to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of state's rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.”
• The people of the Great Society must be highly educated. “I propose that we begin a program in education to ensure every American child the fullest development of his mind and skills.” Public schools should be excellent. Colleges should be affordable and open to any citizen. Every effort should be made to encourage and support those who want to learn or acquire new skills.
• Citizens of the Great Society should be healthy. “I propose that we begin a massive attack on crippling and killing diseases.”
• The cities of the Great Society should be good places to live. “I propose that we launch a national effort to make the American city a better and a more stimulating place to live.”
• The Great Society should be clean and unpolluted. “I propose that we increase the beauty of America and end the poisoning of our rivers and the air that we breathe.”
• The Great Society leaves no person and no region behind. “I propose that we carry out a new program to develop regions of our country that are now suffering from distress and depression.”
• The Great Society does not tolerate criminal behavior. “I propose that we make new efforts to control and prevent crime and delinquency.” 
• The Great Society is rich in art and literature, and the creative genius of its people is supported and encouraged. “I propose that we honor and support the achievements of thought and the creations of art.”
• The Great Society is a frugal and conscientious steward of the nation’s resources. “I propose that we make an all-out campaign against waste and inefficiency.”
• The Great Society is prosperous and the wealth generated by its economy is broadly shared. America’s economic goals are full employment, a skilled workforce, prosperous farmlands, and healthy trade with other nations. Assistance should be provided to those in economic distress, to those who cannot work, and to those who wish to better themselves.


“I do not want to be the president who built empires, or sought grandeur, or extended dominion. I want to be the president who educated young children to the wonders of their world. I want to be the President who helped to feed the hungry and to prepare them to be taxpayers instead of tax eaters. I want to be the President who helped the poor to find their own way and who protected the right of every citizen to vote in every election. I want to be the President who helped to end hatred among his fellow men and who promoted love among the people of all races, all regions and all parties. I want to be the President who helped to end war among the brothers of this earth.”

The Government of the Great Society

“For government to serve these goals it must be modern in structure, efficient in action, and ready for any emergency.”

• The Great Society is a well planned society. “We are going to assemble the best thought and broadest knowledge from all over the world to find these answers. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of conferences and meetings - on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. From these studies, we will begin to set our course toward the Great Society.”
• The Great Society is a frugal society. “Wherever there is waste, I will eliminate it.”
• The Great Society asks its citizens to work together at every level of government and business to achieve its goals. There is no free lunch in the Great Society. Every citizen is expected to grab an oar and row.
• The construction of the Great Society will require several generations of sustained effort. “A President does not shape a new and personal vision of America. He collects it from the scattered hopes of the American past. It existed when the first settlers saw the coast of a new world, and when the first pioneers moved westward. It has guided us every step of the way. It sustains every President. But it is also your inheritance and it belongs equally to all the people that we all serve. It must be interpreted anew by each generation for its own needs.”

 

Foreign Policy of the Great Society

“For ourselves we seek neither praise nor blame, neither gratitude nor obedience. We seek peace. We seek freedom. We seek to enrich the life of man. For that is the world in which we will flourish and that is the world that we mean for all men to ultimately have.”

• America’s primary mission is to extend the American Revolution to the whole world. “We were never meant to be an oasis of liberty and abundance in a worldwide desert of disappointed dreams. Our Nation was created to help strike away the chains of ignorance and misery and tyranny wherever they keep man less than God means him to be.”
• America will oppose tyranny and totalitarianism wherever it appears on the globe. “For in concert with other nations, we shall help men defend their freedom.” “In this period no new nation has become Communist, and the unity of the Communist empire has begun to crumble.”
• America has a special relationship with Latin America. It is in America’s interest for all Latin American nations to be free and prosperous democracies whose wealth is broadly shared by an educated, hardworking population. “With the free Republics of Latin America I have always felt - and my country has always felt - very special ties of interest and affection.”
• American security and European security are linked. America favors a free Europe controlled by free Europeans.
• The developing nations of Africa and Asia are assured of America’s support and cooperation in the creation of free and prosperous democracies in those regions.
• America favors peaceful solutions to all international disputes. Any war any where is a bad war. However, America will oppose tyranny with military force if necessary.
• America will maintain a military force capable of overwhelming any possible enemy. Diplomacy and deterrence are America’s twin policies regarding war.

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