Dame Sarah Mullally, Archbishop of Canterbury, Spoke for a Christianity of Love and Kindness - How Radical!

Sarah Mullally, 2019

“In the midst of such profound global uncertainty, the possibility of healing lies in acts of kindness and love.”

How does a Christian defend kindness and love against their deadliest enemies: fear, indifference, and vengeance? On October 3, 2025, in her first major speech after becoming the new Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverand Sarah Mullally spoke for a Christianity of love, compassion, and mercy. Throughout her speech, she reached out with a larger lesson! She looked to the big picture. She spoke, not just for rejecting fear, but for the larger moral principle – the principle of hope:

“Hope is made of the infinite love of God, who breathed life into creation and said it was good. Hope shimmered in the courage of Abraham and Sarah and the challenging call of the prophets. … Hope is found in Christ’s triumph over sin and death.”

In an era dominated by right-wing rage, love is suddenly controversial? Apparently it is. Conservative Reverand Paula White prayed against “every demonic network that has aligned itself against the purpose and calling of President Trump.” Baptist minister Russell Moore reports that conservative congregations are telling their ministers not to preach from the Sermon on the Mount, because they find it “weak” and too “liberal.” Are such views in any way consistent with Bishop Mullally’s vision of hope and compassion?

Paula White Prayed against Trump's Enemies

Mullally neither named leaders of the right-wing movement, nor did she shame them. Instead, she stood up for the biblical message. She focused on the positive, ignoring the negative: instead of refuting other social trends, she sought to uplift the issue. For example, she said:

"In every church you will encounter Jesus Christ, and his teaching to love one another: our source and our standard. This is both gift and responsibility. Jesus Christ is the life-changing hope that brings us together as church, even in our own brokenness and messiness – and sends us out into the world to witness to that Love."

After praying about God’s “generous mercy” from the Book of Common Prayer, Mullally stated her life’s mission:

“Washing feet has shaped my Christian vocation as a nurse, then a priest, then a bishop. In the apparent chaos which surrounds us, in the midst of such profound global uncertainty, the possibility of healing lies in acts of kindness and love.”

The speaker never mentioned the politicians who seek power by spreading racism and greed. She didn’t need to! Instead, she wisely recognized that those politicians merely symptomize a society that thinks small while clinging to false ideals:

“In an age that craves certainty and tribalism, Anglicanism offers something quieter but stronger: shared history, held in tension, shaped by prayer, and lit from within by the glory of Christ.”

As she pointed out the risks of “certainty,” of course, she implicitly attacked the false feeling that we can overcome strife by clinging to dogma. The evil of “tribalism” arises when we blame our misfortunes on persons outside of our own community or group. 

Antisemitism may be the oldest tribalist evil. So, continuing to oppose antisemitism, Mullally drew a moral lesson from a recent synagogue shooting. Not only did she sympathize with the victims, but she also emphasized the larger point, that we must overcome the “fractures” that separate us instead of uniting us. That larger point reinforced her theme:

“Mindful of the horrific violence of yesterday’s attack on a synagogue in Manchester, we are witnessing hatred that rises up through fractures across our communities.”

Communities, tribalism—Mullally urged the world toward unity. To see the bigger picture, to care about one another with love and compassion.

We do, I have noticed, live in an era when too many people misuse the Christian faith, and other faiths, as weapons to divide us. People express bigotry against those whose faith differs from their own. People too often wish to destroy other faiths rather than to live by the principles of their own faith—principles of love and kindness. 

Rabbi Michael Z. Cahana’s Sermon about the Summer of Love: Is Love the Answer to Nazism?

Pope Francis' Sermon for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees

Throughout this quiet but thought-provoking speech, Mullally repeatedly examined society’s practical and moral failings. Yet she appealed to solve them, not by nuts-and-bolts politics, but by renewing Christian principles: faith, compassion, and service. The big picture is often the best.

by William D. Harpine   

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Note: in the Anglican Communion’s structure, the Archbishop of Canterbury exercises direct authority only over her own church region. However, the worldwide Anglican community considers her to be “first among equals.” Her leadership comes not from authority, but from the force of her wisdom, combined with the respect that believers give to her office. What better way is there to lead, then to lead by moral power?  

Copyright © 2025 by William D. Harpine

Image of Most Reverand Sarah Mullally: 

Roger Harris, public domain, some restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Martin Luther King, Jr. Offered America a Choice

Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us.”

So said Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as he spoke against the Vietnam War on April 4, 1967, at New York City’s Riverside Church. He showed that the Vietnam War was a blow to civil rights in the United States, that the war attacked racial justice just as surely as did racial oppression at home:

In his usual masterly fashion, King employed language to drive home a series of ideas, to impel the audience to make moral choices—not just one idea, but several ways to choose between good and evil. He connected the war with the United States' civil rights movement:

“We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.”

Just as African Americans were victimized in our own land, King reminded that “We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless.” Narrating the suffering of Vietnamese peasants during the war, King stated that, “These, too, are our brothers.”

That theme led King, step by step, to a trio of moral choices. At the end, King used parallel language to his speech with an emotional appeal. King’s trope offered the audience a choice between, on the one hand, the evils of the present day, or, on the other hand, a chance to choose a world of kindness and love. King’s trope showed the audience that, “If we make the right choice,” we could have one–or the other. 

Riverside Church

Rhetorical tropes like the ones in which King excelled are not just decorations, no, they symbolize our thoughts and structure our feelings. They are among a persuasive speaker’s best friends. As philosopher Ernst Cassirer explained, language creates and develops our concepts, our thinking, and our vision. We can neither think nor decide, he said, without processing language.

So, after reviewing the war’s injustices, King’s language linked choice, conflict, and justice. He quoted the poet James Russell Lowell: “Though the cause of evil prosper, yet ‘tis truth alone is strong.” The truth that King extolled was the need for the entire nation to make positive choices, to turn back from violence.

King reviewed the horrors of bombing, crop destruction, and civilian casualties. Indeed, recounting the war’s destruction, King noted that the violence left nothing behind but sadness and regret:

“Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness.”

And who bore responsibility? It was a choice, a decision to pursue violent solutions to Vietnam's problems. To drive that point home, King, always the master of speech conclusions, finally linked choices, universal moral principles, and world conflict into a chance to reform the world in a spirit of love:

“And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when ‘justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.’”

The quotation was from the Bible, Amos 5:24. Each “If” started with the violent, chaotic choice—the choice of war and conflict—but then offered an alternate choice of justice and compassion. King contoured his string of parallel phrases into a vision of moral reform. His “If” statements offer a hypothetical list of what humanity could accomplish if we adopt universal (King said “cosmic”) choices.

Each of the three “If” statements offered a different answer. The first “If” statement offered us a chance to make “the right choice,” and, if we made the right choice, we could turn the “cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace.” An elegy, of course, is a funeral oration, and King ironically offered his audience a chance to choose life rather than reified cosmic death.

King’s next “If” statement offered an additional benefit of choice: that the world’s conflicts – “jangling discords” – into a “beautiful symphony” of universal love. His final “If” statement offered us – by which he meant the American people – a chance to make real the prophet Isaiah’s mythical world of justice. In that world, “justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

When we say “if,” we remind people that things can be different. The point that King’s powerful language made unmistakable is that these are choices. We can choose between a cosmic funeral or a song of peace. We can choose to turn world conflict into unity. If we make the right choices, we can “speed up the day, all over America and all over the world,” when the prophet’s judgment of future harmony becomes, not merely a supernatural gift from God, but a decision that we make as a human race.

Speech conclusions carry great power, for they give the listeners the last thoughts to carry away as a speaker leaves the stage. We might pay little attention to the middle of even the greatest speech, but everyone notices an outstanding introduction or conclusion. King’s conclusion challenged the nation to make the right choices.

The Law Can't Change the Heart, but It Can Restrain the Heartless:" Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech about Church and the Struggle for Justice
https://harpine.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-law-cant-change-heart-but-it-can.html

This speech offered a choice with three spiritual and tangible outcomes. The threefold repetition, “If...choice, If...choice, If...choice,” underscores that evil is a choice, just as we have the chance to choose what is right. President John Kennedy had said, “here on earth, God’s work must truly be our own;” likewise, King said that whether we have peace or violence, cruelty or mercy, justice or injustice, was a choice. A decision. We can choose good things just as we can choose their opposites.

As a preacher, King gave America a chance to choose to live by God’s law of peace and righteousness. King’s lesson was that, not only are the world’s conflicts a choice, but the possibility of ending them was also a choice, a choice that we made by our own actions. To avoid a choice, however? That’s not an option. A university philosophy major himself, King surely knew Jean-Paul Sartre’s dictum that to refuse making a choice is still a choice. King offered a choice between what was evil, or what is good. Not war and violence foisted upon us, but war and violence that we choose. Just as Cassirer was an idealist of language use, so King was a moral idealist who used language to reshape our failing moral attitudes.

by William D. Harpine

About King's Last and Perhaps Greatest Speech:

Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Mountaintop in Memphis, Tennessee: A Speech for the Ages

Another speech using parallel language:

Rhetorical Flourishes in JB Pritzker's Speech against Militarizing Chicago

For a list of more posts about Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speaking career, search in the text box at the right.

    

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Research Note: I plowed through Cassirer’s The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms in graduate school. For people ambitious enough to give it a look, the work is still in print, and available in large research libraries. 

And, yes, my professors also had me read Sartre’s massive  Being and Nothingness. (I must have had far more endurance when I was young!) Whether Sartre was really an atheist or a messianic Jew is a matter that his biographers can debate. His philosophy’s prevailing morality is nonetheless unmistakable.

Rhetorical theorists for centuries have catalogued seemingly endless collections of rhetorical figures and tropes. Here is one nicely condensed list, compiled by Stanford University Lecturer Jonah Willihnganz.

Many thanks to AmericanRhetoric.com for publishing texts of this and many other great speeches.

Copyright © 2025 by William D. Harpine

Image of Martin Luther King, Jr: US News and World Report, released to public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Image of Riverside Church, photo by Bhuck, Creative Commons License, via Wikimedia Commons

"Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself"

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“Fear itself,” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in his First Inaugural Address, delivered on March 4, 1933, was the only danger.

Truly, this scintillating speech featured sharp metaphors and forceful language, not to mention a conspiracy theory, but it worked because Roosevelt organized his ideas to pick up the audience where they were—in this case, paralyzed by fear—and lead them step by step to a solution. 

How does a speaker lead an audience to accept seemingly radical ideas? Roosevelt told his audience—the nation— to overcome their fears. He then from problem to solution. From emotion to logic, and then from logic to action. He first inspired the country’s despairing people, and then discussed the economic collapse, stated its cause, and, finally, gave his solution. People think and feel in patterns. Inspiration, problem, solution.  Anything else is chaos.

Lesser politicians might forget that people in despair don’t need games; they need answers. In 1933, the Great Depression had crushed the world’s economy. Despair ruled the land. The stock market collapsed. Bank failures filled the financial papers. Millions of Americans feared the constant foreclosures. Unemployment exceeded 20%. Unable to find employment, city workers waited in soup lines. For all practical purposes, the free enterprise economy had disintegrated. What could be done?


Step One: Do Not Give in to Fear

Roosevelt launched his speech with one of the most inspiring statements in public speaking history:

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

By the speech’s end, Roosevelt would present dramatic national policies. People obviously feared the economic collapse. However, did they fear change more than they feared the Great Depression? Roosevelt faced that dilemma head-on. Thus, before he gave the details, the new president told people to put aside fear and to advance, not retreat. That started the path to hope. 


Step Two: State the Problem

Before the speech was over, Roosevelt would call for unprecedented new policies. Would 

Soup and Bread line, about 1932

people take the risk? That depends! People only change if they think something is wrong. A speaker gains nothing by telling people that everything is fine when anyone can see that everything is not fine. Not hesitating, Roosevelt stated the problems:

“In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunk to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen.”

Continuing, Roosevelt noted that the financial exchanges were “frozen.” He acknowledged that farmers lacked markets, while families had lost their savings. A brilliant metaphor emphasized the problem:

“The withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side.”

Saving the worst for last, Roosevelt acknowledged the Depression’s vast extent:

“More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.”

No rosy pictures there! No talking points carefully tested in sterile focus groups. Just harsh reality. A problem needed to be solved. How to solve it? That was Roosevelt’s next step.


Step Three: Who Caused the Problems?

One solves a problem by eradicating its cause. Common sense tells us that. The Great Depression was a disaster, and, at the time, economists did not agree on its cause. (To some extent, they still don’t!) So, next, Roosevelt turned to the world’s oldest conspiracy theory. He blamed everything on bankers. Not the banking industry – not the economic system – but the corrupt, morally vacant bankers themselves. Not on what caused the Depression, but who:

“We are stricken by no plague of locusts.… Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply.”

That comment echoed a conspiracy theory that sometimes echoed through my parents’ generation: that the bankers had plenty of money but were too greedy to circulate it. Accordingly, Roosevelt railed against “the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods,” accusing them of “their own stubbornness and their own incompetence.” Noticing Roosevelt’s persuasive technique, Professor Halford Ryan calls this “scapegoating” (see note below). Roosevelt instinctively noticed that the public is more likely to blame malicious actors for their problems than they are to reflect on impersonal economic forces. Roosevelt was not looking for what caused the Depression, but who caused it. Roosevelt used a biblical allusion to accuse the bankers:

“Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.”

Indeed, Roosevelt insisted that the banking industry only knows “the rules of a generation of self-seekers.” Roosevelt would later want to contrast his vision of progress and reform against the bankers. To set the audience up for that next step, Roosevelt attacked the bankers for their lack of vision:

“They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish. Yes, the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization.”

Since, as we shall see in a moment, Roosevelt would offer a dramatic vision, he set himself up to focus his hire against the bankers for their conservative, unyielding unwillingness to change: their lack of vision.

I don’t think many present-day economists would agree that the bankers themselves were personally at fault, but bankers always present a tempting target. People don't like bankers. So, having pled for moral reform, Roosevelt turned to practical action.


Fourth Step: A Solution?

Only now was it time for Roosevelt to give his own vision. Roosevelt called for action:

“This Nation is asking for action, and action now.” [italics added]

First among Roosevelt’s proposed actions was to address unemployment. He advocated government intervention that would, in coming years, turn into the Public Works Administration and the Tennessee Valley Project:

“Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing great—greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our great natural resources.”

Roosevelt’s call for direct government hiring was as radical in his day as it would be today. Still, Roosevelt’s argument was that a nation in crisis needed to act forcefully. Public employment was a logical culmination of his plea to put aside hesitation and act.

Roosevelt further promised to stop “the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms.” He promised to reform and improve relief activities and to develop public utilities. Pressing the issue, Roosevelt urged speed:

“We must act. We must act quickly.” [italics added]

Roosevelt’s sequence of ideas had reached fruition: the nation had been suffering for years. Patience was running out. Anyone could see Germany, Japan, and Italy responding to the economic crisis by turning to right-wing dictatorships. Russia, in contrast, turned to an equally pernicious communist tyranny. Roosevelt instead offered a constructive solution that mashed broadly with the United States’ traditions of constitutional government. Finally, Roosevelt summarized that the people had voted for “a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action.”

Eleanor Roosevelt's Speech about the Struggle for Freedom

 
Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” Speech, a Lesson in Positive Justice

Overall

Roosevelt’s brilliant speech started by warning people against fear. It is, however, never enough to tell people not to be afraid. That is why Roosevelt offered hope. He recognized the economy’s collapse. He identified the cause as the bankers’ ethical failures. Finally, he laid out a program of action. From the bankers' alleged lack of vision, Roosevelt progressed to a vision that required dramatic government intervention to help the failing economy work again. His speech gave a step, by step, by step explanation to motivate the nation and initiate dramatic new policies.

Problematically, the modern science of macroeconomics (which investigates national policy, not personal and business economics) didn’t really exist in 1934.  Conservative economists had noticed the economic cycles, although they expected the economy to self-correct. In contrast, a century earlier, Karl Marx had sourly predicted that the business cycle would eventually tear the free enterprise system to pieces. Both views turned out to be problematic. Despite its wonders, the free enterprise system is always unstable and a certain amount of government supervision (neither too much, nor too little) seems unavoidable. 

So, from one viewpoint, Roosevelt was floundering just as badly as his inept predecessor. Unlike Hoover, however, Roosevelt was willing to explore murky financial waters to give Americans courage. From another viewpoint, Roosevelt understood, as Hoover evidently did not, that the status quo had stopped working, the public needed hope, and Americans needed positive action, not reassuring but vacuous words. Problem – solution. That was the ticket.

Overall, Roosevelt led the nation through a logical chain of reasoning. He warned them against fear, knowing that fear blocks our thinking, and that unthinking people will never progress. He did not cry, “all is well.” Everything was not well. Instead, he laid out the problem starkly and vividly. He then explained solutions. Maybe some of the solutions were good, and some maybe were not. In March 1933, however, the important thing was that he was acting. And only from action could people begin to look forward to the future.

by William D. Harpine   

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Research Note: There have been several excellent academic studies of this speech. I particularly admire Halford Ryan’s meticulously researched essay, “Roosevelt's First Inaugural: A Study of Technique,” published in the Quarterly Journal of Speech in 1979. Although it is behind a paywall, many libraries can probably find it for you in their databases. Ryan noted Roosevelt’s use of scapegoating, which I mentioned above, as well as his use of military metaphors and carrot-and-stick language. Looking at the speech’s composition, Ryan shows how Roosevelt worked with outstanding speech writers, including Raymond Moley and Louis Howe. 

Roosevelt’s comment about moneychangers elliptically refers to the New Testament account of Jesus’ entrance into the Jerusalem Temple, Mark 11:15.

Copyright © 2025 by William D. Harpine

Image of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Leon A. Perskie, Creative Commons license, 

via Wikimedia Commons

Image of Bread and Soup Line, public domain, National Archives and Records Administration, 

via Wikimedia Commons

Huey Long's Populist Speech: "Every Man a King!"

Huey Long

“Is that a right of life, when the young children of this country are being reared into a sphere which is more owned by 12 men than it is by 120 million people?”

Those were Louisiana’s United States Senator’s Huey Long’s opening words in a nationwide radio speech, broadcast on February 23, 1934. In this classic speech, “Every Man a King,” Long demonstrated, with rhetorical skill that few politicians have ever matched, how a liberal politician can dominate the conservative South. He made income inequality into a moral, biblical, and philosophical injustice. Income inequality continues to plague the Western economies in 2025, and one suspects that this is the underlying issue that is leading to world-wide political turmoil. Yet, conservative doctrine often blocks the Western nations from solving the wealth gap.

A populist politician represents economic protection for ordinary persons, in contrast to the rich and powerful. As we shall see in a moment, Huey Long brilliantly wielded a trifecta of conservative values to promote his populist policies. Reaching out to America’s poor, Huey Long’s stunning speech did not refute his conservative opponents: no, Long preempted them. A liberal in conservative dress, a speaker who cited conservative values to relieve his voters’ economic oppression, Long was a populist phenomenon. No populist like him has emerged since.

Speaking during the desperation of the Great Depression, and ahead of his time in economic policy, a Keynesian before Keynes, Long pounded against the wealthy oligarchs and huge corporations that dominated the American economy, leaving ordinary workers to struggle in grinding poverty. In contrast to modern-day liberals, who issue tedious economic lectures, Long posed a simple point:

“We have no very difficult problem to solve.” [italics added]

And what was that “no very difficult problem”? The only difficulty, Long insisted, came when the greedy, “super-rich” economic barons wielded political power:

“It is not the difficulty of the problem which we have; it is the fact that the rich people of this country—and by rich people I mean the super-rich—will not allow us to solve the problems, or rather the one little problem that is afflicting this country, because in order to cure all of our woes it is necessary to scale down the big fortunes, that we may scatter the wealth to be shared by all of the people.”

Now, what were Long’s arguments?


Long’s First Traditional Authority: The Declaration of Independence

Declaration of Independence

First, Long cited the Declaration of Independence, the United States of America’s founding document. In that Declaration, Thomas Jefferson spoke for equality:

“How many of you remember the first thing that the Declaration of Independence said? It said, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that there are certain inalienable rights of the people, and among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’; and it said, further, ‘We hold the view that all men are created equal.’”

Long instantly gave that premise startling economic application:

“Now, what did they mean by that? Did they mean, my friends, to say that all men were created equal and that that meant that any one man was born to inherit $10,000,000,000 and that another child was to be born to inherit nothing?”

Now, since Thomas Jefferson was an oligarch among oligarchs, I suspect that he meant exactly that. But Long was on a roll!

“Is that right of life, my friends, when the young children of this country are being reared into a sphere which is more owned by 12 men than it is by 120,000,000 people?”

Having repurposed Thomas Jefferson, Long then turned to the Holy Bible.


Long's Second Traditional Source: The Bible

Long’s audience was, in general, deeply religious. Long accordingly gave a rather long explanation that he intended to refer to the Scriptures and emphasize “the wisdom of the Lord.” What part of the Bible supports populism, the audience might wonder? (I certainly did!) Long eventually got specific:

“But the Scripture says, ladies and gentlemen, that no country can survive, or for a country to survive it is necessary that we keep the wealth scattered among the people.”

To prove this, Long cited the Year of Jubilee:

“50 years seems to be the year of jubilee in which all property would be scattered about and returned to the sources from which it originally came, and every seventh year debt should be remitted.”

Long neglected to say whether the United States should practice universal debt relief every seven years, nor did he mention the economic consequences of revamping the banking system so radically. That, however, was not the point. Instead, Long's point was that debt was overwhelming ordinary Americans, and that biblical morality justified offering relief. Indeed, not content merely to cite the Bible, Long emphasized the moral principle behind the Jubilee:

“I believe that was the judgment and the view and the law of the Lord, that we would have to distribute wealth every so often, in order that there could not be people starving to death in a land of plenty.”

Over the years, conservative Christians, especially the prosperity gospel preachers, cite the Bible to justify leaving the economic structure untouched. Long turned this around. Biblical law, he emphasized at length, required the community to reverse growing inequality and restore a measure of economic justice.

Long insisted that the Jubilee required systematic debt forgiveness:

“‘Then,’ said the Lord, in effect, ‘every seventh year there shall be a remission of debts; there will be no debts after 7 years.’ That was the law.”

It was only then that Long reviewed figures about American indebtedness. He claimed that the total amount of American currency was only about $6 trillion, and that the total amount of American debt was “45 times the entire money supply of the United States.” But he had already established the solution to that shocking, unpayable debt: the Year of Jubilee. And who would pay the price? The super-rich.


Long's Third Traditional Source: Plato's Republic

For his third authority, Long turned to the Greek philosopher Plato:

“Read what Plato said; that you must not let any one man be too poor, and you must not let any one man be too rich; that the same mill that grinds out the extra rich is the mill that will grind out the extra poor, because, in order that the extra rich can become so affluent, they must necessarily take more of what ordinarily would belong to the average man.”

Only as his speech neared his conclusion did Long state his utopian solution, a new kind of society, a new kind of government, a new kind of nation: 

“Now, we have organized a society, and we call it ‘Share Our Wealth Society,’ a society with the motto ‘every man a king.’”

Forestalling an obvious criticism, Long declined to speak for total income or wealth equality. That might have branded him as a communist, not a populist. He slyly moderated his views into something that a conservative voter might find reasonable; Long argued more for a minimum wage and old-age pensions. Thus, as his speech neared his conclusion, Long spoke for moderate equality. Not really “every man a king” at all. The slogan gave way to political realities:

“We do not propose to divide it up equally. We do not propose a division of wealth, but we propose to limit [the] poverty that we will allow to be inflicted upon any man's family.”

Long’s Proposal

Only now, having made his case for change, did Long lay out his economic policy. He proposed reducing the wealth of a superrich person to “less than $50 million.” He proposed a modest old-age pension and a limited work week.

Yet, as he continued his speech, Long reiterated the cumulative, traditional wisdom that underlay his policies: that God, the philosophers, and economics all pointed toward “Share the Wealth:”

“God told you what the trouble was. The philosophers told you what the trouble was; and when you have a country where one man owns more than 100,000 people, or a million people, and when you have a country where there are four men, as in America, that have got more control over things than all the 120,000,000 people together, you know what the trouble is.”

Okay, who was going to argue against God? Long had demonstrated how to use conservative authorities to support liberal policies.

Huey Long Campaign Poster

You could call Long’s conclusion arrogant, or you could call it biblical. You could say that he was wrong, your choice. But no one can doubt that Long was incredibly persuasive. No one in 1934 could ignore him. The man had grown up in the grinding poverty of the Deep South, and he came to prominence during the horrors of the Great Depression, when the capitalist system was falling apart at the seams.

Simple math shows that only very high taxes on the wealthy could have paid for Long’s policies. However, perhaps sensing that no one would vote for higher taxes, at any time, for any reason, Long cleverly depicted himself as an anti-tax conservative. 

Can Later Speakers Learn from Long? 

Modern-day politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez echo many of Long’s policy concepts. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are persuasive enough in their own right, but they never seem to break out of the extreme liberal mold into which they have poured themselves. Long, in contrast, started with the conservative mold, stating conservative values that were supported by conservative authorities. He then showed how those ideas could help ordinary people. Long did not carefully smooth around the worries and ministrations of the conservative religious right. Not at all! Instead, he utterly preempted the religious right. And, unlike populists like Donald Trump, who speak for the ordinary people while serving the oligarchs, Long reached out to people who, like him, had grown up poor, neglected, and hopeless.

Bernie Sander's 2019 Democratic Socialism Speech: Is He Trying to Be a Politician or a College Professor?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the 2024 Democratic National Convention

As a leader, Huey Long was often described as a dictator who bullied people and overrode the Constitution. I do not doubt those criticisms for a moment, and I do not defend Long’s leadership. Long was perhaps less racist than most successful southern politicians of the time, although that doesn’t say much. Long's slogan “Every Man a King” omits women, although the fact that he addressed his audience as “ladies and gentlemen,” not “gentlemen,” put him a bit ahead of his time. All the same, modern-day liberals could learn from the way he spoke, encapsulated by conservative values and pithy slogans: Share Our Wealth (not share the wealth, but share our wealth) and Every Man a King.  

by William D. Harpine

________________

Biblical Note: 

The Jubilee is described in Leviticus 25 KJV:

“And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.”

Philosophical Note: 

Plato’s views about wealth were more detailed and subtle that what Long implied. But, by that point, Long was steaming along, and I wonder how many of his voters had actually studied Plato anyway. Plato did write this (in Jowett's translation):

“Wealth, I said, and poverty; the one is the parent of luxury and indolence, and the other of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.” Plato, Republic, 422

Research Note: 

Income inequality continues to plague the Western economies, and one suspects that this is the underlying issue that is leading to world-wide political turmoil. The super-wealthy wield enormous political power today, maybe more than in 1934, and inequality has become entrenched into our economic, political, and moral systems. On a personal note, I suspect that Long was indeed prescient, that, indeed, no nation can survive the degree of inequality that infests the United States economy today. The French economist Thomas Piketty has analyzed income inequality in great historical and theoretical depth. I am intermittently plowing through his magnum opus, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, and it is worth struggling through every word. I understand that some of his later work is a bit more readable. 

Readers might want to look at Professor Ernest Bormann’s brilliant article, “A Rhetorical Analysis of the National Radio Broadcasts of Senator Huey Pierce Long,” published in Speech Monographs. It is behind a paywall, but a good library can probably get it for you.

Special thanks to AmericanRhetoric.com for posting a transcript of Long's speech. 

Copyright 2025 by William D. Harpine

Image of Huey Long, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Image of Huey Long's campaign poster, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Patrick Henry Was Right: Donald Trump, the Army, and a Growing Monarchy

“Will the oppressor let go the oppressed? Was there ever an instance?”

So thundered Patrick Henry in 1788, speaking at the Virginia Ratifying Convention in Richmond. Henry's warning passes from his time to ours, through the centuries. That message is eternal. Such is the way of great speeches. He spoke for liberty. As a lawyer, Henry knew how to look for loopholes, and he noticed a huge loophole in the Constitution. That loophole, which afflicts us this very day, is that a twisted president can apply military force to rob us of our liberty.

Patrick Henry warned that the president, in command of the army, and able to call up the militia, could at any moment become an irresistible tyrant. Looking to the future, with wisdom, insight, and fear, Henry’s words remind us in the 21st century about government’s true purpose. A government’s purpose is, he said, to protect, not prosperity, but our liberty:

“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel.”

Indeed, harping on the theme of liberty, Henry made that one value his paramount goal:

“You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end of your government.”

Still, in this speech against the United States Constitution, Patrick Henry prophesied against the Constitution’s hidden dangers. He warned that the Constitution enabled the president to seize full power:

“Your President may easily become king. Your Senate is so imperfectly constructed that your dearest rights may be sacrificed by what may be a small minority.”

Yes, he warned us about Donald Trump. President Trump recently nationalized the District of Columbia National Guard to move into Los Angeles and Washington DC and rid them of a supposed crime wave. Tennessee, a state that supported Trump, kindly dispatched its National Guard to help. Trump now threatens to nationalize the Illinois National Guard to control Chicago. This is political domination, not an anti-crime move, for Trump carefully ignores Memphis, Tennessee, St. Louis, Missouri, and Jackson, Mississippi, all of which have much higher crime rates than Washington or Chicago, but are in states that supported him in the last election. California, the District of Columbia, and Illinois, in contrast, voted for the Democratic presidential candidate and thus seem ripe for a military takeover.

Now, when we think about checks and balances, we might side with James Madison and think about how the states check the president, the president checks Congress, the courts interpret the law, and so forth. Politics, however, ultimately comes down to power: and that is why Patrick Henry alerted the young nation. He warned that it was necessary to have a check against the president’s command of military power. Indeed, he insisted, the best check was to have no president at all.

“Have we the means of resisting disciplined armies, when our only defence, the militia, is put into the hands of Congress?”

That was accurate, for the United States Constitution does, indeed, empower the federal government to call up the state militias:

 

That, indeed, is exactly the constitutional weakness that Trump is exploiting at this moment. The militias (now called the National Guard) operate under state control, but the Constitution provides for the federal government to call them up.

In our own time, President Trump’s political opponents have repeatedly (and, in my view, correctly) accused him of breaking the law: of stealing government documents, encouraging an attack on the United States Capitol, and arresting people without due process. Yet, he remains free. So what? Patrick Henry warned us that no mere court ruling could be enough if the president commanded an army:

“If ever he violates the laws, one of two things will happen: he will come at the head of his army, to carry every thing before him; or he will give bail, or do what Mr. Chief Justice will order him.”

Henry's comment about “Mr. Chief Justice” was pure sarcasm for, as Henry quickly explained:

“If he be guilty, will not the recollection of his crimes teach him to make one bold push for the American throne? Will not the immense difference between being master of every thing, and being ignominiously tried and punished, powerfully excite him to make this bold push?”

Is this not happening today? In our time, obedient to the president’s authority, the United States military can help Donald Trump intimidate, if not control, cities that resist him politically. It seems that the courts rule against Trump but cannot stop him. Henry’s point: a president with an army can flout the law. 

Did Patrick Henry Warn Us About Donald Trump?

Patrick Henry’s “Liberty or Death” Speech: Greater than the Legend?

Furthermore, Henry warned, once the checks and balances break down under military force, who could stop the president as he marches to absolute power? For Henry gave the lie to the entire constitutional framework. That is, he pointed out the giant loophole in the Constitution’s checks and balances:

“But, sir, where is the existing force to punish him? Can he not, at the head of his army, beat down every opposition?”

That is why Patrick Henry condemned the presidency: for the army would obey the president as commander in chief, while the Constitution gave him power to command the militias:

“Away with your President! we shall have a king: the army will salute him monarch: your militia will leave you, and assist in making him king, and fight against you: and what have you to oppose this force? What will then become of you and your rights? Will not absolute despotism ensue?”

Yes, recently, Illinois’ Governor JB Pritzker has promised to resist Trump’s military occupation, but what can he do, really? With the Illinois National Guard nationalized under Trump’s authority, the state can object but not resist. The Republicans in Congress have long abandoned any influence independent of Trump’s.

Rhetorical Flourishes in JB Pritzker's Speech against Militarizing Chicago

Now, some may say that I’m overreacting, and maybe I am. But Patrick Henry’s warning was prescient, and Trump is following the path that Henry warned about. Faced with opposition in the courts, and uncooperative behavior from Democratic states, Donald Trump has begun to abandon persuasion in favor of force: not the ballot, nor the gift of eloquence, but the power of the rifle.

No one can say that Patrick Henry lacked eloquence. He stated the danger in terms that no one could miss: “away with your President;” “absolute despotism;” “trample on our fallen liberty.”

Yet, Americans today apathetically fret over the price of eggs while a potential despot, who appears neither to understand nor appreciate the Constitution, mobilizes armies against his political enemies. Patrick Henry warned against that lukewarm attitude:

“Let my beloved Americans guard against that fatal lethargy that has pervaded the universe.”

Patrick Henry’s speech prophesied, and the prophesied future arrives. Let us never take our liberty for granted. The United States Constitution has served us well and might yet serve in the future. I tremble at any attempt to tamper with its noble, nearly sacred principles. All the same, the Constitution has its loopholes. A president who notices the loopholes, but who lacks a conscience, can work them to nefarious advantage. The courts cannot stop him. A Second Civil War should be avoided, for it would ravage the nation even more than the first one. Neither, however, do I wish to live under a king. The United States must remain the land of the free, and the Statue of Liberty still guards New York Harbor. Can we preserve our liberty?

Liberty. That word was, after all, Henry’s theme. Nearing his speech’s end, Henry reminded his audience – as he reminds us today – of government’s true purpose:

“The most valuable end of government is the liberty of the inhabitants.”

This speech reaches to our time, for Patrick Henry’s warnings are eternal. Henry's eloquence was neither beautiful nor inspiring: no, it was terrifying. Patrick Henry knew perfectly well that the convention would ratify the Constitution. He understood that his speech was futile. Indeed, he apologized for its length. After he finished, Virginia’s Governor Edmund Randolph (who had served at the Constitutional Convention) immediately complained that the speeches had grown so long as to impede the convention’s business: “it will take us six months to decide this question.” Well, we probably have all attended meetings like that, haven’t we? So, I don’t think Patrick Henry was really speaking just to the convention. He was speaking universally. He was warning us. He warned us about loopholes. Will we listen?

by William D. Harpine

____________

N.B. Yes, like other Virginian leaders of that era, Henry owned slaves. Like most of them, he rested uneasily as to whether enslaved persons were entitled to liberty. It took a horrible civil war to settle that question. Pray that we avoid another one.

Unlike Henry's more famous "Liberty or Death," which was reconstructed many years after the speaker's death, most of this speech to the Ratifying Convention was recorded live by a shorthand reporter. Thus, we are blessed with a good text of what he actually said. 

Research note: The Belgian theorists Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca explain that an audience is best viewed as a construction of the speaker's mind. Patrick Henry was not merely speaking to the delegates, but also to the public audience that swarmed into the building. His words of universal wisdom also reach across time. So, let us not take a narrow view of what an audience is.

Copyright © 2025 by William D. Harpine

Image: Portrait of Patrick Henry, US Senate, public domain

"A New Era:" General Douglas' MacArthur's Speech on the USS Missouri

Douglas MacArthur on the USS Missouri

“Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won.”

So said General of the Army Douglas MacArthur eighty years ago, as he spoke over the radio from the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Harbor on September 2, 1945. The Pacific war was over. And MacArthur offered the United States, the assembled delegates – and the world – wisdom for the future. Wisdom that we have, I regret to say, sadly forgotten. Ceremonial speeches praise what is good and condemn what is bad, while offering values that can guide us. MacArthur urged people to build a world of spiritual and humanitarian growth.

In that vein, although World War II was an unfathomable cataclysm, MacArthur offered an opportunity and a warning:

“A new era is upon us. Even the lesson of victory itself brings with it profound concern, both for our future security and the survival of civilization.”

As a shaky world emerged from the war’s horrors, MacArthur offered, not fear, not hatred, but a “new era.” Unlike many world leaders from past to present who celebrated victory as vengeance, MacArthur instead called for peace and preservation:

“We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war.”

With the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki only a few weeks in the past, MacArthur warned that, not war, but only spiritual and moral awakening could preserve humanity. The disaster that authoritarian governments had wreaked upon the world proved, MacArthur explained, that:

“We have had our last chance. If we do not now devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door. The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our almost matchless advances in science, art, literature and all material and cultural developments of the past two thousand years. It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.”

Harry Truman’s Atomic Bomb Speech Revealed “The Power of the Laboratories”

Adolf Hitler's Speech in the Berlin Sportpalast: God and Power

Note, please, that MacArthur admired human advances in knowledge, art, industry, and culture, but those advances were, he reminded us, not sufficient. To avoid destruction, humanity must revitalize the spirit. We must, he insisted, have a spiritual rebirth. It would not be enough merely to preserve the human character – for, as he knew all too well, human character had created World War II – but we also needed an “improvement of human character.” His lesson was that the new technologies that have been created in peace and war alike will serve us only if we improve our souls.

Eleanor Roosevelt's Speech about the Struggle for Freedom

MacArthur’s warning, however, called us to hard reality. Hitler and Nazi Germany had promised to create the Master Race. They created only ruin. Japanese war dogma preached the doctrine of indomitable fighting glory. They only created radioactive rubble. That is why MacArthur began his speech by praising democracy and freedom. And that is why his final point resonates today, when he called for a world:

“...based upon a tradition of historical truth as against the fanaticism of an enemy supported only by mythological fiction.”

So, as he summed up with a militaristic metaphor, MacArthur stated the cause of peace and justice:

“Today, freedom is on the offensive, democracy is on the march.”

However, in 2025, is freedom still on the march? As you look back, have we fulfilled MacArthur’s vision for “a new era?” MacArthur gave our forebears cause to reflect. If we ever think to retreat into ourselves, to shirk compassion and to eschew responsibility, will MacArthur’s vision have been in vain? In a larger context, have we in 2025 achieved the “improvement in human character” which MacArthur advocated? Or have we, in the United States, fallen victim to conspiracy theories (what MacArthur’s speech called “mythological fiction”), which lead overconfident people to tremble in terror from make-believe dangers? Do we want democracy and freedom to march forward, or shall we instead cling to our memories of a glorious past that never really existed? Do we constantly seek to improve our character and spiritual health, or will we, as so many nations have done throughout history, sink into cold indifference? Will we waste what MacArthur called “our last chance?” Such are the value questions that MacArthur addressed. 

Indeed, every good ceremonial (or epideictic) speech espouses values and offers at least generalized advice for the future. Speaking eighty years ago, MacArthur said much that can inspire us today. Can we honor the sacrifices of World War II and continue to build “a new era?” Heaven help us if we do not.

On a personal note, many American families can recall tales of selfless sacrifice. My father, Sergeant Casper Allen Harpine, Jr., earned battle stars for Operation Torch and Operation Dragoon. My father-in-law, Gunner’s Mate Third Class Jesse Doyle Clanton, was a disabled veteran of the Battle of the Atlantic. My mother’s brother, Private First Class Peter Feduska, died fighting Nazis in the Ardennes forest at Christmastime, 1944. Countless thousands of such stories can be told. Those men and women served to bring about “a new era.” We can best honor the Greatest Generation’s memories by seeking MacArthur’s vision: to “go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war.”

by William D. Harpine   

_____________________

Historical Note:

During his long career, Douglas MacArthur had many military triumphs (like the Inchon landing) and his share of disasters (like the failed invasion of North Korea). The public admired MacArthur’s eloquent speaking and strong sense of values. Presidents worried about his publicity-seeking egotism. He was at times disciplined, and, at other times, despicably insubordinate. In my view, however, his greatest accomplishment was that he and his staff organized the postwar occupation of Japan to create a lasting parliamentary government that respects human rights and became a force for peace and prosperity in the western Pacific. That alone was accomplishment enough for a lifetime.

Image: US Navy photo, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Copyright © 2025 by William D. Harpine

John F. Kennedy's 1960 Labor Day Speech

John F. Kennedy

“American labor has insisted upon, and won, the highest wages and best working conditions in the world.” 

So said future president John F. Kennedy on Labor Day in 1960, as he launched his successful campaign for president. Most Labor Day speeches are political, for the rights of workers raise political questions. John Kennedy transcended the nickel and dollar economic issues, which were important enough in themselves, and insisted that only organized labor could protect the United States of America’s democratic form of government.

In this speech, pointedly delivered at Cadillac Square in Detroit, home of the motor vehicle industry and its unionized workers, John Kennedy called the Dwight Eisenhower administration anti-labor. President Eisenhower was not running for reelection, but the Republican Party had nominated Eisenhower’s vice president, Richard Nixon, to be their candidate.

Blaming economic downturns on the administration, Kennedy asked his pro-labor crowd to separate pomposity from economic troubles:

“But not even the rose-colored glasses monotonously peddled by the present administration with Madison Avenue slogans can hide the problems. There have been two recessions within 7 years, and there are economists who believe a third is coming.”

Then, building to his theme, John Kennedy insisted that the labor union movement protected the United States from dictatorial rule. The labor union movement

Cadillac Square in 2022

protected, he said, the rights of working people:

“Collective bargaining has always been the bedrock of the American labor movement. I hope that you will continue to anchor your movement to this foundation. Free collective bargaining is good for the entire Nation. In my view, it is the only alternative to State regulation of wages and prices–a path which leads far down the grim road of totalitarianism.”

That slippery slope may seem overstated, but Kennedy, the future president, insisted that collective bargaining by labor unions protected, not only the United States’ economy, but, indeed, the entire political system. That is a bigger issue indeed:

“Those who would destroy or further limit the rights of organized labor - those who would cripple collective bargaining or prevent organization of the unorganized - do a disservice to the cause of democracy.”

Following a well-worn rhetorical path, speaking 75 years ago, Kennedy transcended the immediate issue. By calling organized labor the foundation of American government, Kennedy elevated the issue past the question of bargaining for wages.

Then, turning the tables on the Republicans, he complained about economic stagnation. He accused the Republicans of turning American prosperity into a political game:

“The administration has played politics with this issue–as well as with the minimum wage, health care for the aged, school construction, and housing programs.”

In his conclusion, on Labor Day in 1960, Kennedy raised his transcending argument to a spiritual level:

“In the crucial years ahead, organized labor will have much to contribute to the cause of democracy. May I say, then, God bless you in your efforts. May they be rewarded in the creation of a better world for all who seek freedom.”

We hear rhetoric like this all the time, although John Kennedy did an excellent job of it. Politicians say things like, We are not just talking about education! We are talking about the foundation of civilization, or We are not just talking about one church’s rights. No, we are talking about the entire First Amendment. And so forth.

John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address: A Call to Service

On the one hand, transcending arguments boost a speech’s power. Transcending arguments give political policies an ideological context. On the other hand, transcending arguments obstruct our attempts to debate policy issues. We are no longer talking about whether we should raise the minimum wage, or whether a church has the right to violate health or building codes. Once the argument has transcended, we need to confront the ideology before we can discuss practical actions. When arguments transcend practical issues, the transcendence harms the already challenging need to discuss, debate, and compromise.

Nevertheless, was not John Kennedy prescient? In the years since, a series of conservative economic policies have, indeed, suppressed the minimum wage, limited workers’ rights, and reduced protections for collective bargaining. Kennedy stated a judgment between workers’ rights, compared with the rights of the people who conservatives call “job creators.” We are always tempted to say that our opponents are not merely wrong, but evil. However, when at that point, how do we work together? The political and economic conflict between workers and owners remains with us today. Are there any easy answers? I don’t see any.

Still, by staking himself to the labor movement, John Kennedy celebrated Labor Day in its inevitably political vein and began his successful march to the White House.

by William D. Harpine  

___________________

Personal Note:

Many thanks to the hard-working people whose labor makes America great. Fond memories of Grandfather Michael Feduska and Uncle Harry Waslo, who worked in Pennsylvania's steel mills, and Grandmother Anna Feduska, who raised chickens. Less fond memories of my own brief, long-ago employment collecting people's trash for $1.80 an hour. 

Happy Labor Day to all! 

Research Note:

Professor Suzanne McCorkle wrote brilliantly about transcending arguments in her 1980 article, “The Transcending Claim as a Strategy of Pseudo-Argument.” She posits that transcending arguments create the false impression that speakers have proven something when they have merely changed the issue, or that they have proven something more important than what they want their listeners to think. She makes a good point. Something to consider. Her article is behind a paywall, but a good library might find a copy for you.

Professor David Zarefsky offers a more positive view of transcendence in argument. His essay is a chapter in Topical Themes in Argumentation Theory: Twenty Exploratory Studies. If the book seems too expensive, you might find it in a large university library.

Copyright © 2025 by William D. Harpine

Image of John F. Kennedy: Official White House photo, public domain

Image of Bagley Fountain, Cadillac Square by w_lemay, Creative Commons License,

 via Wikimedia Commons