GAZETTE COLUMN: THE MAKING OF A LIBERAL by John P. Flannery

The Senator & an Admirer

When I was a kid in the Bronx, Stevie who lived in the basement of the adjoining tenement went wherever I went. 

One day when I was in grammar school, a mother told me that if I took my friends and went away from their walk up, I could come back later, as long as Stevie was not with us. 

Stevie was black and that’s the first time I understood discrimination. 

I’d seen blacks on TV being pushed around the sidewalk by high pressure hoses with great force and apparent pain.  But that seemed far away. 

Now what happened to Stevie was up close and personal.

I began to appreciate that freedom (liberty as in liberal) was constrained by equality and that also meant tolerance for others no matter their color. 

We also saw that it mattered to some if a person was Jewish, or Roman Catholic, or anything the other person was not.

 Senator Kennedy came to Fordham University when I was at the Prep there and I heard him challenge this mostly Roman Catholic audience to action.  I returned late to Latin class in a reverie.  This nation didn’t elect Governor Al Smith President, some said, because he was Catholic.  Voters feared the Pope would tell him what to do.  Senator Kennedy spoke about how his religion shouldn’t matter as a qualification for office – although it did. 

I appreciated from that day forward that the founders were right when, in the Constitution of the United States, they made our government secular, allowed freedom to worship, but barred any theocracy or religious oaths. 

Because my parents had few resources, I was grateful for Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller who funded scholarships based on performance and need.  The federal government had a program instituted by President Eisenhower, the National Defense Education Act,  that also made my education possible.  Some believed that an educated public was a national asset that made us stronger and more competitive globally.  Some now think these are wasteful federal programs.  But I’m not one of them.  I think these state and federal programs fulfilled the preamble to our Constitution that “We the People” seek “a more perfect union” and “justice,” “tranquility,” “the common defense,” and the “general welfare.”

There are those who turn a blind eye to those among us who have less, who are poor, and sick and hungry.  The Jesuits taught me that we should “do unto others” as we’d have them do for us.  They taught that the Sermon on the Mount was as good a prescription for public service as anything you could imagine.  Years later, when Stan Brand and I became friends, he told me that his client, Speaker Tip O’Neil, always felt good about any legislation he instituted that met that Sermon’s directives. 

I know there are people who think that it’s every man or woman for themselves.  I don’t agree but they have a right to think that way.  But I think they are fooling themselves when they believe they did it on their own – as no one in this world makes it alone on his or her own steam – and few do it without any help from federal, state or local government.

Lastly, though I had my fair share of street fights in the Bronx, I have always believed that the standard of civilization is how we resolve our differences peacefully, and that’s about the law, and why I became a lawyer.