An American hero from another world - 1962

The past couple of weeks I have been exploring how America in the 1950s and ’60s had a chance to stop the juggernaut of bigger government from crushing the spirit of free enterprise, and for the most part missed the opportunity.

It’s been a nostalgic, if not exactly a feel-good, look back at a simpler era when good and evil were understood to have real meaning, and the folks fighting for right did not have to justify themselves in the public square.

Coincidentally, for the past few weeks, I have been working on putting together a special section of the Daily Inter Lake that focuses on Northwest Montana 50 years ago. That collector’s edition will be published in Monday’s paper and features 46 pages from the 1962 “Progress Edition” published by the Inter Lake. I highly recommend it to our readers for a chance to brush up on your local history, as well as to enjoy a real “feel good” moment about our shared American traditions.

As part of my research in putting together the “Back to the Future” section, I stumbled upon an editorial page from Feb. 11, 1962, that I thought was worthy of comment. It demonstrated that even a small-town newspaper could be a forum for big ideas and for defending our country against attacks both foreign and domestic.

In particular, I noticed an editorial entitled “Governor’s Last Speech.” It explained that a speech by Gov. Donald G. Nutter had been broadcast posthumously following his death about 10 days earlier in a plane crash.  

The Inter Lake editorial writer said that the speech “pointed out some things we feel bear repeating” and then lamented that “there are pieces of logic that must be played over and over and over again so that they soak into our heads, which sometimes are pretty dense.”

I must admit that I sympathized with both the governor and the editorial writer. Too often I feel like I am reduced to repeating in this column bits of logic that should be truisms, but which seem startlingly fresh and even unconvincing to some readers — things like “American patriotism is good” and “communism is bad.”

I suppose Gov. Nutter must have felt the same way when he spoke out against the United Nations, as he did in this final speech. He was probably considered a “right-wing kook” and an extremist because he stated plainly that the United Nations “has become little more than a forum for our enemies.” Remember, this was back in the day when little old first- and second-graders like me were carrying our milk cartons to raise money for UNICEF right along with our pillow case for collecting candy on Halloween.

But Nutter was a man of principle, not expediency. In fact, I learned that he was the only governor in the nation who did not proclaim United Nations Day. Instead he had proclaimed Oct. 23 as “United States Day” in Montana. How refreshing! According to the Inter Lake, Nutter explained that he would “support any organization of nations dedicated to Christian principles and promoting freedom and liberty for all people, everywhere.”

Today, of course, no governor could make such a statement. He or she would be considered a bigot for promoting “Christian principles” to the exclusion of Muslim or communist principles. I have heard this criticism myself many times, to which I have asked in response, “If a person or a country or even a church cannot promote their own principles, then what is the point of having principles?”

Gov. Nutter was obviously a man of principle, who did not hesitate to stand for what he believed. He had enlisted in the Army Air Forces in World War II and as a B-24 pilot had flown more than 60 combat missions. After a brief career in business, he enrolled in law school and also pursued a political career that led to his being elected governor in 1960. Due to the plane crash that killed him and five others, he only served one year in office — leaving us to ponder what impact he might have had on the course of our nation’s future had he been able to convince his fellow citizens that the United Nations and socialism were dangerous to the Americanism of our Founding Fathers.

In his final speech, Nutter intoned, “There are those among us who believe some other form of government is better, that socialism in its ultimate degree — communism — has something to offer.”

That certainly remains true to this day — perhaps even more so than in 1962. Witness the rise of the “Occupy” movement last year, and the casual acceptance of socialist programs in our federal government for decades. Indeed, those who have comprehended the growing danger to our republic can only read Nutter’s final words with fear and trembling:

“What does all this mean to you and me? Just this: through selfishness, greed, complacency and apathy, we can cancel out all of the sacrifices made by us, by our fathers and by our forefathers.

“Through failure to exercise our constitutional rights and perform our duties to protect this nation, we can and will drift away from our great heritage.”

The judgment of the 50 years that have passed since these words were written is not kind to our generation or to the one before it. Can we honestly say that we have upheld and defended the Constitution? Can we make the case that we have protected our nation from enemies both foreign and domestic?

I doubt that Gov. Nutter, an American hero, would think so. Nor would another American hero, John Kennedy, who wrote and delivered a better known address, and who also died an untimely death the following year.

It was President Kennedy who said, in his inaugural address, “that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans — born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage — and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.”

Sounds to me like the senator and the governor were, in many respects, on the same page. Kennedy was famous for telling Americans that they must ask what they could do for their country — AND for the freedom of man. Nutter was asking the same thing. One was a Democrat and one a Republican, but they were united in their love of country.

How far we have come from 1962, and yet how desperately we need to get back to it. Perhaps we can sum up our plight best with another quote from President Kennedy’s inaugural address:

“The world is very different now. ... And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe — the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.”

It is this precept which fuels everything I believe in — and which makes me today neither a Republican nor a Democrat, but a liberty-loving American.