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Tatiana Brown-Gomez

Cooper

AP English - 5

10 April 2018

Faith is One Step to Freedom

The government is a corrupt place that needs to be fixed by the people. That is at least

what George Wallace believes what will help America grow as a country. One big issue Wallace

brings up in his speech countless of times is why liberals and some forms of government should

not allow faith to be apart of an American’s life, which creates issues. At the time liberals were

supporting the Civil Rights Movement for African Americans, the poor, and many other groups.

This was just another reason why Wallace despised liberals because they wanted change. George

Wallace argues that the fact that by letting faith stray away from Americans’ everyday lives it

creates fear in the wrong places where it should be for God, because that is obviously the most

important factor of one’s life. However, faith does not make and should not make a government

because it leads to others being shunned for not wanting or having a religion. Wallace addresses

everyone but clearly, his audience is just certain Alabamians. Wallace believes religion ties in

with everything and can be the answer to solving bigger problems such as corruption and

communism; government needs to allow faith in systems to let the public be more trusting with

them and to stop from letting the government overruled the people and turning into the Soviet

Union.

“Liberals” or “racists” as Wallace would call them, want faith to be removed in schools,

American currency and more, this affects how America was started and what it was supposed to

be. (“The Inaugural Address of Governor George C. Wallace” 6). "So the international racism of
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the liberals seek to persecute the international white minority... this same group of men to briefly

bare the ungodly core of that philosophy in forbidding little school children to say a prayer."

(“The Inaugural Address of Governor George C. Wallace” 6).Wallace provides a solution to the

recurring question of government and corruption being intertwined. This comes from the red

scare or the sense of communism finding its ways into America. The Liberals are seemed to

support this and which is why they are racist because all they want to do is target the “white

minority” and by Wallace’s standards, the government is full of them including the president,

John F. Kennedy (“The Inaugural Address of Governor George C. Wallace” 6). This is how the

government is corrupt, for it is full of biased peoples who only want to benefit the other majority,

which would be specifically African Americans. George Wallace would become known for his

racism against African Americans and famous words from this speech would be remembered

forever, "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."(“The Inaugural Address

of Governor George C. Wallace” 2). What Wallace fails to consider is that Liberals and even

JFK at the time wanted to disapparate the phrase equal but separate for the reasons that the

American public needed to be united rather than divided through the harshness of the cold war.

Throughout the speech, Wallace tries to create a creediable and emotional argument to get to the

audience with some facts but mostly trying to get his audience angered at the biased government.

The government is a corrupt system with ideas of equality and change while it should be

focusing on God, this creates a fear of God’s wrath instead of the government pretending to be a

God. Specifically Wallace was scared of another incident such as the Red Scare, Wallace offers

one reason why it occurred in the first place is because the government censors religion which

leads to communist tendencies. Wallace then furthers his argument by using many persuasive

ways to convince his audience that the government has a large role to play in this. Wallace did
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not see that Liberals were fighting for equality but rather change which was not necessary

because change would eventually just lead to failure. "But the strong, simple faith and sane

reasoning of our founding fathers has long since been forgotten as the so-called "progressives"

tell us that our Constitution was written for "horse and buggy" days...so were the Ten

Commandments." (“The Inaugural Address of Governor George C. Wallace” 6). JFK, in

particular, was the new and young president that the older generation feared, in a way Wallace

was afraid of JFK and his upcoming policies. JFK was making the unemployment rate go down

as he was peacefully fighting for the Civil Rights movement and George Wallace wanted nothing

to do with it. JFK and Liberals were trying to make America ease back into the economy as they

faced the Cold War. While Wallace saw this as a threat JFK saw this as an opportunity to start

fresh and he succeeds tremendously.

The religion or political party a person identifies with isn’t the issue because respecting

different groups separately will make the nation stronger and this is how the government should

be divided with certain rights and power to create a just government. This idea also comes from

the ideology that races should be separate and Wallace’s speech was partly written by Asa

Carter, who was a outspoken racist himself. Wallace supported his ideas to a certain extent to

where once again he thought to separate rather than be one. Specifically using Thomas Jefferson

to seem even more trusted by the public as a whole, Wallace gives a progressive point of view,

which differs from what he has been saying previously but shows he can be open to some ideas.

The younger generation focused on economic issues and also the involvement of the people, JFK

wanted an increase to the defense budget and to create equality throughout the American

community. This is what liberalism was at the time, taking every power possible to change the

system and having equality through race and economic status. Although Wallace claims that
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power separation should be the same as separate religion and separate political parties it is not

that simple nor should it be. Wallace’s intentions were to keep everything separate which left

things to be conservative and did not have the community interact with each other.

Wallace got his point across that no faith leads to communism in the long run but his

argument has many flaws because even though he argues as if he’s unbiased he still is. Wallace

uses unique tactics to where he can make Liberals, Progressives, and racists seem to be full of

ideas of change and equality.

Works Cited
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Graber, John. “JFK, Democratic icon, was far too conservative for today’s liberals”. The Badger

HERALD. 30 November 2017. https://badgerherald.com/opinion/2017/11/30/jfk-democratic-

icon-was-far-too-conservative-for-todays-liberals/. Accessed 5 April 2018.

Pearson, Richard. “Former Ala. Gov. George C. Wallace Dies”. Washington Post. 14 September

1998. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/sept98/wallace.htm. Accessed 5

April 2018.

Wallace, George. “The Inaugural Address of Governor George C. Wallace”. Inaugural Address. 14

January 1963. Alabama Department of Archives & History. Alabama Department of Archives

& History. 2010. http://digital.archives.alabama.gov/cdm/ref/collection/voices/id/2952.

Accessed 6 April 2018.