Johnetta B. Cole Quotes
I am profoundly disturbed by any attempt to take government responsibility away from government … it is government’s responsibility to educate all of our children …. The fundamental responsibility for poverty of this country does not belong to the churches; it belongs to the government.
Johnetta B. Cole, President, Spellman College, Speech, Vassar College, State of Black America Forum, Washington DC, February 3, 2001
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Olasky and many religiously oriented analysts, believe that public shame shapes and controls behavior and if a society does not have a set of recognized norms, and every person is free to determine his own propriety, there will be moral degeneration and there is no way to produce desirable social and political outcomes. This is perhaps the longest political and philosophical ongoing debate. In a society people cannot be free if there is fear, coercion and chaos with public safety primary. But how can this be produced unless there are generally accepted moral and behavioral codes like that of a religion. And then if one has that, and it is dominant, how can someone be free from the coercion of that morality or religious code? There must be freedom not to believe. Or must there be? Many say yes. Many others, especially orthodox leaders of most religions believe, No. Christian, Jewish and Muslim fundamentalists all say No, but then they insist that the norm be theirs.
The founder was Charles E. Coughlin, 1891-1979, a demagogic Catholic Priest who drafted the principles and invited others to join him. Hundreds of thousands did in this organization which began in idealism, and ended in scandal and hate mongering, so much so that Father Coughlin was ordered off the radio and out of politics by the Catholic Church. The National Union in 1936 had morphed into the Union Party which ran Presidential candidates in the 1936 election.
What makes this a noteworthy political quotation is that when he made the statement, his party had lurched to the radical right and almost no one else in the Republican party would publicly say that the Federal Government had any legitimate role that involved social services, food distribution, welfare or health care. Also the Republican Presidential candidate the day before had been discovered writing off the poorest 43 percent of the country. Heller however, was up for reelection in a state what was hit much harder than most in the Great Recession and without Federal Assistance many state residents would be in terrible circumstances and Heller would not fare well in the election if he took the then required Republican ideology. Also, Heller came from a blue collar family and had a much different outlook than most Republicans of that particular time.
Johnnetta Betsch Cole (born 1936) is an American anthropologist, educator, museum director, and college president. Cole was the first female African-American president of Spelman College, a historically black college, serving from 1987 to 1997. She was president of Bennett College from 2002 to 2007. During 2009–2017 she was Director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art.
