In Massachusetts, we are citizens before we are partisans.
Calvin Coolidge
The Public Record
Calvin Coolidge was the 30th President of the United States, serving from 1923 to 1929. A member of the Republican Party, he was known for his quiet demeanor and strong support for business and limited government. Coolidge's presidency is often associated with the economic prosperity of the Roaring Twenties, and he famously advocated for a hands-off approach to the economy, believing that government should interfere as little as possible in the lives of citizens and businesses.
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And I propose to do this without any party bias and without blame upon any particular individual, but in just criticism of a system.
I agree that partisanship should stop at the boundary line, but I assert that patriotism should begin there.
We recognize there is need of relief--need to our industries, need to our population in manufacturing centres; but it must come from construction, not from destruction.
The advance may have been too rapid in some cases, but there can be no retreat.
The reuniting of the Republican Party means no reaction in the protection of women and children in our industrial life.
The Republican Party lit the fire of progress in Massachusetts.
Our party will have no part in a scheme of economy which adds to the misery of the wards of the Commonwealth--the sick, the insane, and the unfortunate; those who are too weak even to protest.
The Democratic programme of cutting the State tax, by vetoing appropriations of the utmost urgency for improvements and maintenance costs of institutions and asylums of the unfortunates of the State, cannot be the example for a Republican…
We cannot curtail the usual appropriations or the care of mothers with dependent children or the support of the poor, the insane, and the infirm.
I refuse, and the Republican Party refuses, to endorse that method of sham and shoddy economy.
Good government cannot be found on the bargain-counter.
I am not one of those who believe votes are to be won by misrepresentations, skilful presentations of half truths, and plausible deductions from false premises.
Only so long as this flame burns shall we endure and the light of liberty be shed over the nations of the earth.
The assertion of human rights is naught but a call to human sacrifice.
But these are not the end, whether these come or no; the end lies in action--action in accord with the eternal principles of the Declaration of Independence; the words of the Continental Congress, but the deeds of the Army of the…
Here lies the path to national preservation, and there is no other.
Herein are the teachings of this day--touching the heights of man's glory and the depths of man's duty.
But above all, the call to duty, the pledge of fortune and of life, nobility of character through nobility of action: this is Americanism.
Beyond this, the principle that it is the obligation of the people to rise and overthrow government which fails in these respects.
They put no limit on what the State must do for the citizen in his hour of need.
These sons of the Puritans, of the Huguenots, of the men of Londonderry, braved exile to secure peace, but they were not afraid to die in defence of their convictions.
They knew the value of increasing their material resources, but they knew that prosperity was a means, not an end.
They knew that the State called on its citizens for their property and their lives; they laid down the proposition that government was to protect the citizen in his life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
They knew that the duty between the citizen and the State was reciprocal.
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