[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 14 (Tuesday, January 24, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1394-S1396]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                         SPEECH OF JACK VALENTI

  Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, I recently read a speech that I believe 
deserves the attention of all Senators. Jack Valenti, the president and 
chief executive officer of the Motion Picture Association of America, a 
former aide to President Lyndon B. Johnson, and one of the most 
articulate and thoughtful people I know, delivered the speech in New 
York City, as the first in the Louis Nizer lecture series.
  Jack Valenti's words that evening carry a special resonance for me 
and I think they will for others. They are words of optimism about our 
future, in a time when too many in our country do not feel optimistic. 
But they are also words of caution, directed toward all of us in this 
body and all of us in this city, who create the policies under which 
Americans live. They stress the importance of the family, of education, 
of appropriate moral conduct, of individual--not governmental--
responsibility.
  They are words to which we should all give careful consideration.
  I ask unanimous consent that, following my remarks, the full text of 
Jack Valenti's speech be included in the Congressional Record.
   [[Page S1395]] There being no objection, the speech was ordered to 
be printed in the Record, as follows:

    William Faulkner's Old Verities: It's Planting Time in America!

                           (By Jack Valenti)

       The issues of liberty and the replenishment of community 
     values stirred restlessly within Louis Nizer. He and I talked 
     often about the compass course of the society. We both had 
     read the purifying speech of William Faulkner when he 
     received the Nobel Prize for Literature, on December 10, 
     1950. Like me, Louis found in Faulkner's words a dark 
     punishing wisdom, a plain, spare design for civic conduct. It 
     is from Faulkner's vision that what I say tonight has taken 
     wings. I think Louis would approve. Let me begin, then, by 
     admiring this man, Louis Nizer, who has drawn so many of you 
     here tonight.
       In the muscular and musical English language which Louis 
     knew so well, loved so much and illuminated so elegantly, 
     there exits two words which perfectly describe him.
       They are ``polymath'' and ``fidelity.''
       Polymath means an artisan of immense learning in many 
     fields.
       Francis Bacon once said he had taken all knowledge to be 
     his province. For Bacon it was not an immodest objective. But 
     such were Louis Nizer's vast and diverse talents, he is the 
     only man I know or knew who could come close to matching 
     Francis Bacon. Lawyer, courtroom genius, public speaker, best 
     selling author, painter, composer, lyricist, historian, 
     counselor to presidents and public officials, he was all of 
     these and more. And in each he performed with excelling 
     intellect and ascending success.
       Fidelity means faithfulness to obligations and observances.
       Louis Nizer gave special meaning to the word ``fidelity.'' 
     In his binding to the law, fidelity took on a richer meaning. 
     The law in all its glory was the core of his life. It was the 
     reservoir from which his daily tasks drew nourishment.
       I first met Louis Nizer almost twenty-nine years ago when 
     he came to visit with me in my office in the White House. I 
     was about to resign as Special Assistant to the President, to 
     become the President of the Motion Picture Association of 
     America. He was to become the MPAA general counsel. Our paths 
     that day not only crossed, but became intimately interwoven 
     and forever sealed in friendship and trust.
       His long, fruitful life is now over. Death, as it does to 
     every mortal, has finally came to Louis Nizer. I can say that 
     I am so grateful to a beneficent God that I was given to know 
     Louis so intimately, so gloriously, so lovingly. He was a 
     noble man. There are so few of his kind.
       Any enterprise that bears Louis' name is valuable to me. 
     This evening then, to me, has great worth. May the Louis 
     Nizer Lecture series flourish in the decades ahead. May I do 
     it as little damage as possible tonight.
       I have been fortunate to spend my entire working career in 
     two of life's fascinations, politics and movies. I have 
     worked the precincts of my native Texas, within City Hall and 
     county courthouses and the state capitol. I have been privy 
     to decision making in the White House, at the side of a 
     brave, extraordinary President. And I have for a long time 
     been among and within the creative and executive communities 
     of Hollywood and the world cinema.
       Both arenas, movies and politics, and sprung from the same 
     DNA. Their aims are the same: to entice voters and audiences 
     to yield to their persuasions. What is the value of those 
     persuasions? What is real? What is right? What is truth? Who 
     determines it? Who furnishes the boundaries for the daily 
     moral grind of a functioning society? How is that society to 
     be
      governed? How do you shape a foundation for a nation's prime 
     objective to endure, always striving to reach for the 
     ascending curve?
       These are ancient queries. Answers are available but often 
     they are porous, not readily translated into specific 
     behavior. Sometimes they are cast in different shapes to 
     different people. Which answer is true? ``What is truth,'' 
     said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.
       I have thought a lot about this, though thinking about 
     these matters is like trying to pick up mercury with a fork. 
     It is maddeningly elusive. But we have to keep trying.
       Herodotus tells the story of Athenians so emotionally 
     affected by the drama, ``The Capture of Miletus'', by the 
     poet Phrynichus, that the whole theater wept openly. When 
     their passions had cooled, Athenian officials passed a law 
     forbidding Phrynichus ever again to offer this play to the 
     public. He was fined a thousand drachmas for reminding his 
     fellows citizens of their own sorrows. It is an apt metaphor 
     for our current scene. Nothing so much describes the 
     perversity of political and social conduct, and calls to 
     judgment the resorting to morality by public officials as an 
     instrument of domestic and foreign policy.
       It's a dicey political game to play. Like the Athenians we 
     are deeply involved in that which tugs at both our practical 
     minds and our moral conscience. Also like the Athenians we 
     find the real world, the morning after, not so desirable as 
     we had previously thought.
       If morality is a rostrum from which we survey our lives, 
     then it is also a principle on which we stand. Principles, 
     unless one rises above them, are cruelly steadfast. If a 
     principle is ignored, for whatever practical reasons, or 
     bent, for whatever
      seemingly rational decision, then it is no longer a 
     principle. It becomes a weak reed on which we lean at our 
     own peril.
       So it is that Presidents and Members of Congress, as well 
     as officials of state and local governments, find themselves 
     dealing with morality on a ``yes, but'' logic. If you tried 
     to draw up a catalogue of the good guys and the bad guys, you 
     wind up with public officials from the President down being 
     judged on the same basis as that well known medieval monarch, 
     Philip the Good, renowned in his time for both the number of 
     his bastards and the piety of his fasts. Too often our 
     officials, in both political parties, see issues through 
     their own personal prism. To that end, the historian 
     Procopius wrote about the Emperor Justinian: ``He didn't 
     think that the slaying of men was murder unless they happened 
     to share his own religious view.''
       We are poised for a great debate in this land. It has to do 
     with the reach of government, how wide, how narrow. But I 
     daresay the debate will be waged on the wrong platform. 
     Emerson may have gotten it right when he wrote: ``God offers 
     to everyone his choice between truth and repose. Take what 
     you please, you can never have both.'' Emerson is also 
     speaking to this generation as well.
       I am not a pessimist. Never have been. Don't intend to 
     start now. This country did not survive more than 200 years 
     of cruel disjointings to be undone at this particular moment 
     by discomforts cataloged at length, mainly by TV commentators 
     and political consultants. These are the new political Druids 
     who convince their viewers and their clients that they alone 
     are capable of inspecting the entrails of a pig and thereby 
     are solely in possession of the bewitchery which will lead 
     voters to a proper decision.
       But this scrambling, unquiet, violent time is one of the 
     rare moments in our history when those who govern us and 
     those
      who are governed are in concert. Fear is the scarlet thread 
     which runs like a twanging wire through the nation. Fear 
     of tomorrow; fear of losing one's job; fear that children 
     will find their future less attractive than did their 
     parents; fear of crime, in the neighborhoods and in the 
     home; fear that the old bindings which held the nation 
     together are snapping: in too many cities there are too 
     many broken homes, too much loss of the affection which 
     thickens family ties, too much crazy drug use and users, 
     too many guns in the hands of too many children, too many 
     babies having babies, abandonment of the church, schools 
     without discipline, life without hope, anger fed by 
     imagined slights and bigoted blights.
       No wonder there is fear. The first thing we have to do to 
     combat fear is understand that no matter how well intentioned 
     we are, unless we are guided by a basic moral compass, we 
     will neither begin nor finish the journey. Make no mistake, 
     the politicians are listening. There is nothing so compelling 
     to a public official as the angry buzz of the local 
     multitudes.
       Therefore (ah, `Therefore' is a wondrous word. It says 
     enough of the rhetoric, what do you do tomorrow morning?), 
     Therefore:
       We ought to start with William Faulkner. In his speech in 
     1950, he cited what he called ``the old universal verities 
     and truth of the heart, the old universal truth lacking which 
     any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity 
     and pride and compassion and sacrifice. He might have added 
     ``and duty and loyalty and service to one's family and 
     friends and country.''
       Faulkner's old verities have weight because they are what 
     an enduring nation is all about. Old fashioned words? Yes, 
     they are. Long-living words? Yes, they are. All the more 
     reason why words which have sustained themselves in myth and 
     reality are
      never out of date. These words describe neither religion nor 
     ideology nor political affiliation. No group or faction or 
     political party has a monopoly on interpreting their 
     meaning.
       What Faulkner's verities represent is a code of conduct 
     between human beings, between the citizen and the state, 
     between neighbors, friends, associates. They are better 
     guides than a political poll, or the blatherings demagogues, 
     or those earnest folks who insist they alone possess God's 
     wisdom. We have an old prayer in Texas when we encounter 
     these human repositories of divine Truth: ``Dear Lord, let me 
     seek the truth, but spare me the company of those who have 
     found it.'' Nice prayer. I say it often.
       So, we begin with Faulkner's proposition that there are 
     basics deep rooted in those crevices where each of us stores 
     our beliefs and our passions. Without them we are barren of 
     aim or cause or reason. Or as Faulkner said, without them we 
     ``labor under a curse.''
       Government cannot, ought not, be a national nanny, nor the 
     custodian of our faith nor the divine arbiter of our lives. 
     Each citizen must be responsible for his or her actions, 
     fathers, mothers, sons, daughters. Parents must be 
     responsible for their children. Adults responsible for there 
     decisions. Young people responsible for what they do. Playing 
     ``victim'', copping a plea that ``the Devil made me do it,'' 
     these are mocking charades in which the foolish listen to the 
     dunces and the dimwits lead the mob.
       Taking responsibility for one's life, for one's action, 
     does not mean turning away from the helpless and the 
     hopeless. What it does mean is that if there is not a civic 
     commitment to be individually responsible, the 
     [[Page S1396]] future is pockmarked with detours and 
     disappointment. But we must be wary in the months ahead. 
     Strenuous efforts will be made to amputate the national
      government's intervention in the lives of those pressed 
     against the wall because of circumstances over which they 
     have no control. It would be tragic to do that. It would 
     be worse than a crime. It would be a blunder. It cannot be 
     allowed to happen.
       To give Faulkner's old verities a communal reality, we have 
     to begin within the family, for parents to care enough, 
     believe enough, do enough to begin the process. Parents, 
     sufficiently armed with passion, can do the most.
       Alongside this familial commitment has to be a zealous 
     attention to teachers and schools. We have to be willing to 
     pay for first class public education or it continues to be 
     lousy education. We can't build enough prisons, or wield 
     enough judicial sabers, or legislate enough tough death 
     penalty laws to compensate for the collapse of discipline in 
     the classroom, or the graduation from high school of too many 
     who can't read or write or the total loss of Faulkner's 
     verities. In a time when our national obligations are larger 
     than our capacity to fulfill them all at the same time, our 
     leaders must make it clear--painful, discomforting, 
     frustrating as it may be--that we have to reinstall the 
     family and the school and the church as the central teaching 
     centers for young people. We have to begin the journey back 
     into ourselves before we can go forward into our future. Too 
     idealistic? Too namby-pamby? too impossible? `Yes,' to all of 
     those descriptions if you think a society can just amble 
     along and keep its liberties alive when so much of its core 
     convictions are in a state of decay. I don't. Every day 
     liberty must be guarded, because like virtue it is every day 
     besieged.
       Then, why am I optimistic? Because all things are always in 
     flux. Nothing lasts forever, neither triumph nor tragedy, nor 
     the omissions of the human spirit. So long as we understand 
     who we are, why we are what we are, and how we became so, 
     then we will always be able to know where it is that we ought 
     to turn and where we must go. Of course, this requires a 
     national conviction. Without conviction, said Lord Macaulay, 
     a man or woman will be right only by accident.
       President Kennedy supposedly told the story of a French 
     general in Algeria who wanted to plant a special kind of tree 
     to line the road to his chateau. ``But,'' protested his 
     gardener, ``that tree takes a 100 years to bloom.'' The 
     general smiled and said: ``Then we have no time to lose. 
     Start planting today.''
       It's planting time in America. Faulkner's old verities will 
     take root again much sooner than the General's trees.
     

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