Political Rhetoric in Theory and Practice: A Reader 9781009367370, 1009367374

Table of contents :
Cover
Political Rhetoric in Theory and Practice
Contents
Introduction
Part I. WHAT IS RHETORIC?
1. Classical Foundations
2. The Three Kinds of Rhetoric According to Aristotle Deliberative Rhetoric
3. The Modes of Persuasion: Ethos, Pathos, Logos (Character, Passion, Argument)
4. Rhetoric and Diction
Part II. POLITICAL RHETORIC IN PRACTICE
5. Civil Rights and Race in the United States
6. The Women’s Movement
7. Rhetoric in Times of Crisis and Doubt
8. War and Conflict
9. Tyrannies Left and Right
Index

Citation preview

Political Rhetoric in Theory and Practice Political Rhetoric in Theory and Practice is an introduction to the art of rhetoric or persuasive speaking. A collection of primary sources, it combines classic statements of the theory of political rhetoric (­Aristotle, Isocrates, Demosthenes, Cicero) with a rich array of political speeches, from Socrates to Martin Luther King Jr., Pericles to Richard Nixon, Sojourner Truth to Phyllis Schlafly. These speeches exemplify not only the three principal kinds of rhetoric – judicial, deliberative, and epideictic – but also the principal rhetorical proofs. Grouped thematically, the speeches boast a diversity of speakers, subject matters, and themes. At a time when the practice of democracy and democratic deliberation are much in question, this book seeks to encourage the serious study of rhetoric by making available important examples of it, in both its noblest and its most scurrilous forms. Robert C. Bartlett is the Behrakis Professor in Hellenic Political Studies at Boston College. He is the author or editor of ten books, including Sophistry and Political Philosophy: Protagoras’ Challenge to Socrates (2016) and Against Demagogues: What Aristophanes Can Teach Us about the Perils of Populism and the Fate of Democracy (2020), and is the translator of a new edition of Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric (2019). Nasser Behnegar is the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Political Science at Boston College. He is the author of Leo Strauss, Max Weber, and the Scientific Study of Politics (2003) as well as studies of the political thought of John Locke, Shakespeare, and Carl Schmitt.

Political Rhetoric in Theory and Practice A Reader

Edited by ROBERT C. BARTLETT Boston College, Massachusetts

NASSER BEHNEGAR Boston College, Massachusetts

Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8EA, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467 Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge. We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781009367370 DOI: 10.1017/9781009367400 © Cambridge University Press & Assessment 2024 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. First published 2024 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bartlett, Robert C., 1964– editor. | Behnegar, Nasser, 1963– editor. Title: Political rhetoric in theory and practice : a reader / edited by Robert C. Bartlett, Boston College, Massachusetts, Nasser Behnegar, Boston College, Massachusetts. Description: New York : Cambridge University Press, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023025077 | ISBN 9781009367370 (hardback) | ISBN 9781009367400 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Communication in politics. | Rhetoric – Political aspects. Classification: LCC JA85 .p6545 2024 | DDC 320.01/4–dc23/eng/20230828 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023025077 ISBN 978-1-009-36737-0 Hardback ISBN 978-1-009-36738-7 Paperback Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

Introduction

page 1

Part I  What is Rhetoric? 1 Classical Foundations

9 11 1 Socrates’ Account of Rhetoric: Plato, Gorgias 463a–c, 464b–465d11 2 Aristotle, Art of Rhetoric 1.1–3 (excerpts)12 3 Cicero, “On Oratorical Partitions” (excerpts) 15 4 Quintilian, “What is Rhetoric?” Institutes of Oratory (excerpts)19 2 The Three Kinds of Rhetoric According to Aristotle 24 Deliberative Rhetoric 24 1 Aristotle, Art of Rhetoric 1.4, 6, 8 (excerpts) 24 2 Thucydides, Corinth and Corcyra Appeal to Athens, Peloponnesian War 1.31–45 (433 bc ) 3 Demosthenes, Second Philippic (excerpts) (344–343 bc ) Epideictic Rhetoric 1 Aristotle, Art of Rhetoric 1.9 (excerpts) 2 Thucydides, Pericles’ Funeral Oration, Peloponnesian War 2.35–46 (431 bc ) 3 Gorgias, Encomium of Helen (circa 414 bc ) 4 Isocrates, Helen (circa 370 bc ) 5 Gouverneur Morris, “Alexander Hamilton” (July 14, 1804) 6 Daniel Webster, “On the Deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson” (excerpts) (August 2, 1826) 7 Abraham Lincoln, “Gettysburg Address” (November 19, 1863) 8 Frederick Douglass, “Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln” (April 14, 1876) 9 Robert Kennedy, “Remarks on the Assassination of MLK” (April 4, 1968)

26 31 34 34 36 40 43 51 53 59 60 67 v

Contents

vi Judicial Rhetoric 1 Aristotle, Art of Rhetoric 1.10, 12, 14 (excerpts) 2 Socrates’ Address to the Jury After his Conviction: Plato, Apology of Socrates 38c–end (399 bc ) 3 Cicero, First Oration Against Catiline (excerpts) (63 bc ) 4 Thomas More, Defense Speech (July 1, 1535) 5 Emile Zola, “The Dreyfus Affair” (excerpts) (January 13, 1898) 6 Clarence S. Darrow, Closing Argument in the Leopold and Loeb Case (excerpts) (August 22 and 23, 1924) 7 William Jennings Bryan, Closing Argument in the Scopes “Monkey” Trial (excerpts) (July 21, 1925) 8 Nelson Mandela, “I am Prepared to Die” (excerpts) (April 20, 1964) 9 Johnnie Cochran, Closing Argument, OJ Simpson Trial (excerpts) (September 27–28, 1995)

3 The Modes of Persuasion: Ethos, Pathos, Logos (Character, Passion, Argument) Pathos or Passion 1 Aristotle, Art of Rhetoric 2.1–2 (on anger) and 8 (on pity) 2 Thucydides, Cleon on the Fate of the Mytileneans, Peloponnesian War 3.37–40 (427 bc ) 3 Shakespeare, Mark Antony’s Speech, Julius Caesar 3.2.82–108 4 Huey Long, “Every Man a King” (excerpts) (February 23, 1934) Ethos or Character 1 Aristotle, Art of Rhetoric 2.12, 16 (excerpts) 2 Richard Nixon, “Checkers” Speech (September 23, 1952) 3 Douglas MacArthur, “West Point Address” (May 12, 1962) 4 Barack Obama, “A More Perfect Union” (March 18, 2008) Logos or Argument 1 Aristotle, Art of Rhetoric 2.18–20 (excerpts) 2 Shakespeare, Brutus’ Speech, Julius Caesar 3.2.13–65 3 Frederick Douglass, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” (excerpts) (July 5, 1852)

69 69 70 73 78 80 83 87 93 100 103 103 103 105 108 109 115 115 117 124 128 135 135 137

138 4 Rhetoric and Diction 144 1 Aristotle, Art of Rhetoric 3.1–2 (excerpts)144 2 Abraham Lincoln, “Temperance Address” (February 22, 1842)145 3 Mark Twain, “Die Schrecken der Deutsche Sprache” [The Horrors of the German Language] (excerpts) (November 21, 1897)151 4 General George S. Patton’s Speech to the Third Army (June 5, 1944)153

Contents Part II  Political Rhetoric in Practice 5 Civil Rights and Race in the United States

vii

157 159

1 Booker T. Washington, Atlanta Exposition Speech (September 18, 1895)159 2 W.E.B. Du Bois, “A Negro Nation Within a Negro Nation” (June 26, 1934)162 3 Martin Luther King Jr., “The Montgomery Boycott Speech” (excerpts) (December 5, 1955)164 4 John F. Kennedy, “Report to the American People on Civil Rights” (excerpts) (June 11, 1963)167 5 Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream” (August 28, 1963)170 6 Malcolm X, “Message to the Grassroots” (excerpts) (November 10, 1963)173

6 The Women’s Movement

179

Sojourner Truth, “Ar’n’t I a Woman?” (1851)179 1 2 Susan B. Anthony, “On a Woman’s Right to Vote” (excerpts) (1873)180 3 Lucy Parkman Scott, “Be Women and Do a Woman’s Work” (April 10, 1895)182 4 Josephine Jewell Dodge, “Woman Suffrage Opposed to Woman’s Rights” (November 1914)184 5 Gloria Steinem, “Living the Revolution” (May 31, 1970)188 6 Phyllis Schlafly, “What’s Wrong with ‘Equal Rights’ for Women?” (January 1, 1972)194 7 Ambassador Samantha Power, Commencement Address at Barnard College (May 17, 2015)200 8 Christina Hoff Sommers, “The Real Oppression that Campus Feminists Aren’t Talking About” (June 8, 2015)206

7 Rhetoric in Times of Crisis and Doubt

209

1 Abraham Lincoln, “A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand” (June 16, 1858)209 2 Theodore Roosevelt, “Citizenship in a Republic,” Address to the Sorbonne (excerpts) (April 23, 1910)214 3 Jimmy Carter, “Crisis of Confidence” (also known as the “Malaise” Speech) (July 15, 1979)224 4 Bill Clinton on Monica Lewinsky (“I did not have…”) (January 26, 1998)229 5 Donald J. Trump, Inaugural Address (January 20, 2017)231 6 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “A World Split Apart,” Harvard Address (excerpts) (June 8, 1978)234 7 Allan Bloom, “Western Civ.,” Address to Harvard University (December 7, 1988)244

Contents

viii

8 War and Conflict

258

1 Shakespeare, “St. Crispin’s Day Speech,” Henry V 4.3.18–67258 2 Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural (March 4, 1865)259 3 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “For a Declaration of War Against Japan” (December 8, 1941) 261 4 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “State of the Union Address to Congress” (January 6, 1941)262 5 Neville Chamberlain, “Munich Agreement” (October 3, 1938)268 6 Duff Cooper, Speech in the House of Commons (October 3, 1938)270 7 Winston Churchill, “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat” (May 13, 1940)277 8 Winston Churchill, “Their Finest Hour” (excerpts) (June 18, 1940)279 9 John F. Kennedy, The Cuban Missile Crisis (October 22, 1962)282 10 Winston Churchill, Iron Curtain Speech, “The Sinews of Peace” (March 5, 1946)286 11 Ronald Reagan, “Tear Down This Wall” (June 12, 1987)294 12 Margaret Thatcher, Falklands War Speech (June 15, 1982)298 13 George W. Bush, 9/11 Address to the American People (September 11, 2001)300 14 George W. Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress (September 20, 2001)302

9 Tyrannies Left and Right

308

1 Maximilien Robespierre, Address to the National Convention (excerpts) (February 5, 1794)308 2 Vladimir Lenin, “Thesis and Report on Bourgeois Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” (excerpts) (March 4, 1919)319 3 Joseph Goebbels, “Our Hitler” (April 19, 1933)325 4 Adolf Hitler, Closing Address to the Nazi Party Congress, Nuremberg, Germany (September 10, 1934)329 5 Joseph Stalin, “Defects in Party Work and Measures for Liquidating Trotskyite and Other Double-Dealers,” Report to the Plenum of the Central Committee (excerpts) (March 3, 1937)330 6 Adolf Hitler, Speech Declaring War on the United States of America (excerpts) (December 11, 1941)336 7 Mao Tse-Tung, “A Great Leap Forward” (excerpts) (May 17, 1958)348 8 Deng Xiaoping, Address to the Martial Units – Tiananmen Square (June 9, 1989)354

Index

361

Introduction

This volume is intended to introduce students and general readers to the theory and practice of political rhetoric. In a traditional liberal arts education, rhetoric formed the third and last part of the trivium, as it was called, preceded by grammar and logic. But just as the study of grammar and logic seems to be on the wane today, so the study of rhetoric no longer enjoys the status it once did – though we hope that it will regain its rightful place.1 For we regard the study of rhetoric as crucial to the conduct of a decent deliberative politics: citizens need to be equipped to stand before their fellows, express themselves clearly, and try to persuade enough of them that this or that policy ought to be enacted or rejected. Many in modern democracies, it is true, decry the advent of “sound bites,” the ubiquity of slick, focus-grouped blather, and the reduction of complex policy questions to 280 digitized characters, all in sharp contrast to serious political discourse. It’s a fair point. But who is willing to do something about it? And how to do something about it? Where might we begin to learn about the fundamentals of that art meant to guide and clarify and elevate speech, the art of rhetoric? We hope that this book will offer some such beginning for those readers who are concerned about the health of democratic practice today and who may even wish to do their part to improve it. We hope too that the book will offer some assistance to those who are interested more generally in the art of speaking well, regardless of the subject matter. Collected here, then, are some The editors would like to thank Jay Alipour, Ethan Cutler, and Nathan Davis for their help in preparing this volume. 1 For an account of the decline of rhetoric in modern times – and a vigorous defense of rhetoric – see Bryan Garsten, Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). For general histories, see James A. Herrick, The History and Theory of Rhetoric: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2013) and George Kennedy, A New History of Classical Rhetoric (Princeton University Press, 1994).

1

Introduction

2

of the greatest or most prominent examples of the art of rhetoric, ancient and modern, homegrown and foreign, examples that bear on both its theoretical foundations and practical applications. As readers will soon discover, the proper definition of rhetoric is a matter of debate. For now, we may call it simply the art of persuasive speaking. It seems certain that, for so long as human beings have gathered together in communities of a kind, they have tried to persuade their fellows by means of speech or argument – to recommend, warn, praise, or condemn. In other words, human beings have long engaged in something that resembles the practice of rhetoric. Only gradually, however, did they bring to this natural activity the self-conscious attempt to understand it and refine it, just as carpenters and potters only gradually developed the rules and practices that constitute their respective arts. The art of rhetoric was born on that day when someone sought, not just to argue a point, but to reflect on the peculiar demands of argument, of speech-making, as such; rhetoric as an art was born when someone tried to figure out the general rules that might guide any speaker in the almost limitless variety of concrete circumstances. The statesman-orator Cicero, for his part, suggests that the art of rhetoric as a distinct field of study was discovered at some point in the fifth century by two Greeks who lived, as it happened, in Syracuse, Corax and Tisias by name.2 From that distant point there follows a long line of illustrious figures who concerned themselves with the theory and practice of rhetoric: Thrasymachus, Gorgias, Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates, Demosthenes, Quintilian – all of whom are represented in this volume. Since we are recommending not only the study of rhetoric but also the practice of it, we should confront at the outset a serious problem with it. For anybody concerned with rhetoric is forced to admit that an odor attaches to the thing. To say of a speech that it is “heavy on rhetoric” is not a compliment; “highly rhetorical” does not generally mean “excellent.” But the core of the problem with rhetoric is not that it may encourage empty puffery or windbaggery, for this listeners can usually detect, by its eye-glazing effects, and so judge it for what it is. The core of the problem is instead this: rhetoric is necessarily concerned with persuasion – with convincing others of something and hence with changing their minds – but it is not necessarily concerned with the truth. Rhetoric must persuade but it need not teach. More sharply stated, what is true, just, and good need not be persuasive, and what is persuasive may well be false, unjust, and bad. Or, as Aristotle put it, quoting some lines of the tragic poet Euripides: But if in fact it is possible among mortals To make false pronouncements persuasively, You ought to believe the opposite, too, That mortals are often not persuaded by truths.3 2 3

Cicero, De Oratore 1.20.91 and Brutus 46. Aristotle mentions the rhetorical art of Corax at Art of Rhetoric 1402a17. Art of Rhetoric 1397a17–19, quoting Euripides’ (lost) Thyestes.

Introduction

3

Precisely if it is elevated to the level of an art, rhetoric amounts to a loaded gun, and loaded guns can be used for ends vicious as well as virtuous. To clarify this important point, we may cast a glance at the earliest extant dispute about rhetoric, namely, the stinging criticisms leveled against it by Plato’s Socrates and the defense of it by Plato’s greatest student, Aristotle. Plato treats political rhetoric chiefly in the Gorgias, the dialogue named after the most celebrated rhetorician of Greek antiquity. When Socrates is asked to define rhetoric, he does so by means of a somewhat complicated schema that compares the genuine arts that treat both body and soul, on the one hand, to the sham ones that only pretend to do so, on the other. Sophistry is the sham art or “knack” corresponding to the genuine art of legislation, which develops or strengthens the soul in its health (just as the genuine art of physical training develops or strengthens the body in its health); and rhetoric is the sham art or knack corresponding to the genuine art of justice, which, chiefly in the form of just punishment, returns the soul to health from sickness (just as the art of medicine returns the sickly body to health).4 According to Socrates in the Gorgias, then, sophistry and rhetoric belong together as flim-flam “arts” that falsely claim to tend to the well-being of the soul; neither so-called art is what it appears to be or accomplishes the great good that it promises. Rhetoric in particular, Socrates says, persuades by means of flattery while teaching nothing. And Socrates does not blush to give this tough take on rhetoric in the presence of Gorgias himself. Aristotle addresses Socrates’ criticisms in effect (if not quite by name) at the outset of the Rhetoric. In fact the authentic title of that work – Art of Rhetoric  – is already a challenge to Socrates: rhetoric properly understood is an “art” (technē) and no mere trial-and-error “knack,” let alone a sham. And where Socrates maintains that rhetoric is a “counterpart” (antistrophē) to nothing more elevated than fancy cookery, which may flatter our bodies to the detriment of our health, Aristotle maintains in the first sentence of his Rhetoric that it is the “counterpart” (antistrophē) to dialectic, itself a branch of the science of “analytics” or logic.5 Aristotle does of course acknowledge a problem with rhetoric or at any rate with its reputation. Yet this problem he traces initially to the pernicious influence of certain “technical writers,” whom he does not stoop to name. These technical writers, oddly enough, have neglected the technical part of rhetoric, namely the “proof” (pistis) together with its “body” or core, what Aristotle famously dubs the “enthymeme” or rhetorical syllogism.6 Rather than elaborate on these terms at the outset, however, Aristotle instead sketches the matter 4 5

6

See Part I, Chapter 1, for the text of the Gorgias discussed here. Compare Plato, Gorgias 465d7–e1 with Aristotle, Art of Rhetoric 1354a1. For what follows, we rely in part on the discussion in Robert C. Bartlett, “Interpretive Essay,” in Art of Rhetoric (University of Chicago Press, 2019), 214–18 and 274. Art of Rhetoric 1354a13–16 and context.

Introduction

4

with which these writers are concerned, to the detriment of rhetoric: how to manipulate to your advantage the passions of the judges or jurors, including their anger, envy, and pity. To “warp the juror” in this way, Aristotle says, is “as if someone should make crooked the measuring stick he is about to use.”7 Here Aristotle takes his bearings by “well-governed cities,” which prohibit everyone involved in judicial proceedings from introducing anything extraneous to the case, such as passionate appeals would be: if all cities were so governed, the authors of technical treatises “would have nothing whatever to say.” “Correctly posited laws” should define all that can be defined in judicial matters and so leave the fewest possible things for the juror to decide – or for the rhetorician to manipulate. Aristotle is critical also of the emphasis the technical writers place on judicial rhetoric, to the neglect of political speech-making especially, despite the fact that “the same method” applies to both kinds of rhetoric and that political speech is “less pernicious” and even “nobler” than is the judicial, which is largely in the service of private concerns.8 The failings of “the writers,” then, are not only theoretical – the neglect of the proof and rhetorical syllogism – but moral or political too. Hence Aristotle’s opening defense of rhetoric takes the form of a defense of correct laws, “the legislator,” and a public-spirited political discourse. Rhetoric properly conceived can and should aid all of these. Aristotle does not rest content, however, with an explanation of the source of rhetoric’s bad reputation. He also sketches the legitimate uses of rhetoric that together constitute a positive case for it. First, “what is true and what is just” are naturally superior to their opposites, but they can for all that be defeated in debate, “and this is deserving of censure.” Rhetoric’s task, then, is to come to the assistance of the truth and of justice so that they win out. Something of the character of that defense is broached in Aristotle’s second argument, for he contends that, even if someone makes an argument that accords with “the most precise science,” it would in the case of some people be “impossible” to persuade them.9 The limits of science, or the limits of the capacity of some to grasp the teachings of science, mean that the rhetorician must come up with speeches or arguments (logoi) that rely on what is “commonly available” or readily acceptable to a given audience, as distinguished from the dictates of science: rhetoric must be able to persuade in the absence of teaching. This much Aristotle concedes to Plato’s Socrates. Such a concession implies that the defense of the truth just mentioned might need to be more rhetorical than true in some cases. If rhetoric is itself a science (or art), then it would include the precise knowledge of the limits of precise knowledge to bring about persuasion. What may be more, Aristotle will eventually concede that the manipulation of the passions, which he had initially criticized, is in 7 8 9

Art of Rhetoric 1354a25–26. Art of Rhetoric 1354b22–28. Art of Rhetoric 1355a24–29.

Introduction

5

fact a key part of rhetoric, and in his justly famous account of the passions in Book 2 of the Rhetoric10 he offers practical advice on how to rouse or quell a given passion – anger, envy, and pity included.11 Aristotle adds to these arguments a third, that rhetoric is useful because it can teach us to “persuade others of opposites” – that justice is good and that justice is bad, for example. Rhetoric equips us to argue two sides of the same question. Aristotle adds, however, that this skill should be acquired, “not so that we may do both – for one must not persuade others of base things – but so that it not escape our notice how the matter stands and how, when someone else uses arguments unjustly, we ourselves may be able to counter them.”12 Hence Aristotle’s case for the responsible use of rhetoric includes an acknowledgment of its disturbing power. For to say that skilled rhetoricians can “persuade others of opposites” amounts to saying that they can make “the weaker argument the stronger,” a claim that people were “justly disgusted by” when they heard the sophist Protagoras make it.13 The problem with rhetoric is then not limited to the distortions imposed on it by “the technical writers,” but inheres in the power of the art itself. Yet, to repeat, we must never exercise that capacity to persuade others of opposites. Instead, an able defense of “what is true and what is better by nature” requires that we see the arguments against them leveled by others in order to parry them. To take an example from Plato, his Republic would not be the defense of justice that it is, were it not for the arguments of Thrasymachus – the rhetorician Thrasymachus – which forced on Socrates and his friends a deeper inquiry into justice. The very wish to defend “what is true and what is better by nature,” or what is just, compels us to try to understand these things as they are. Aristotle also adds as a fourth reason to study rhetoric: that it allows one to defend not only justice but also oneself. For if it is a “shameful thing” not to be able to defend ourselves with our fists, isn’t it all the more shameful to be incapable of doing so with logos, with speech or reason, which is to a greater degree our own than is the body? In this way Aristotle takes up the question of the rhetorician’s own good: rhetoric does redound to the benefit of the 10

11

12 13

Consider, e.g.: “Aristotle investigated the pathe [passions] in the second book of his Rhetoric. Contrary to the traditional orientation of the concept of rhetoric according to which it is some kind of ‘discipline,’ Aristotle’s Rhetoric must be understood as the first systematic hermeneutic of the everydayness of being-with-one-another.” Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, ed. and trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996), 130. Consider Art of Rhetoric 1354a16–18 with 1380a2–4 (on anger); 1380b29–33 (on gentleness); 1382a16–20 (on friendly feeling and hatred); 1383a8–12 (on fear); 1385a34–b1 (on gratitude); 1387b16–20 (on pity); and 1388a25–29 (on envy). Consider also 2.1, end: it is essential to understand how the angry are disposed, and with whom, and at what sorts of things, for “if we should grasp one or two of these, but not all of them together, it would be impossible to foster anger in another, and similarly in the case of the other [passions].” Art of Rhetoric 1355a29–38. Art of Rhetoric 1402a22–27; consider also, e.g., Aristophanes, Clouds 112–115 and Plato, Apology of Socrates 23d6–7.

Introduction

6

rhetorician – but only in a manner that permits someone to avoid a shameful weakness or vulnerability, presumably in law courts and the like.14 To summarize, Aristotle defends rhetoric as being crucial to the conduct of a decent deliberative politics: rhetoric is a counterpart of the science of dialectic; it deserves to be called an art and hence involves real knowledge; and it fulfills functions at once necessary and noble by helping us give voice to our concern for what is good and bad, just and unjust, noble and base. Aristotle also confronts the fact that rhetoric permits those who have mastered it to persuade others without strictly speaking teaching them anything – just as Plato’s Socrates had argued – and so it may well be more “effective” than decent. Aristotle deplores the unjust use of rhetoric, which means that he cannot deny the possibility of it, as little as he can deny that appeals to the passions of the audience do indeed form a part of the art of rhetoric. Instead, he exhorts students of rhetoric to employ well or justly the very skills his treatise seeks to refine. Someone more impressed by the technical refinement than the moral exhortation could, it is true, use the art of rhetoric to learn to manipulate an audience, for his or her own ignoble purposes, by appealing to an existing prejudice, for example, or rousing a dormant passion. But there will be rhetoric with or without the careful study of it, just as there will always be those who prefer their own good to the common good; and Aristotle, for one, does what he can not only to make rhetoric deserving of the title “art” but also to yoke its practice to decent ends. And isn’t it better for us to know that – and especially how – rhetoric can be misused, as a prophylactic against our becoming its dupes? How else to become savvier “consumers” of rhetoric than by studying its devices and stratagems? As for Socrates, or Socrates together with Plato, they were in truth master rhetoricians who could do as they wished with any interlocutor15 and who deployed their prodigious talents to make of philosophy a way of life deserving of respect. To see that this is so, one only needs to read the end of the Gorgias, with its awesome and moving account or myth of the afterlife; the critique of Gorgian rhetoric proves not to constitute a critique of all rhetoric. Just as Aristotle was alive to the dangers of rhetoric but promoted its (responsible) use nonetheless, so Socrates was harshly critical of rhetoric but made use of a (philosophic) rhetoric nonetheless: his very criticisms of rhetoric bear the stamp of the rhetorical.16 There is more agreement than first appears between Plato’s teacher and his greatest student on the necessity, and the risks, of rhetoric. We too endorse the study of rhetoric in our time, not because it cannot be misused but precisely because it can be. Caveat auditor. *** 14 15 16

Consider Plato, Gorgias 486a4–d1, 508c4–d3, and 521c3–8. Consider Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.2.14. Consider in this regard Devin Stauffer, The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias: Rhetoric, Justice, and the Philosophic Life (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

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This volume is divided into two main parts. Part I is devoted to the theoretical question of what rhetoric is, and it addresses that question by having recourse to some of the greatest authorities of Greek and Roman antiquity: Plato’s Socrates, Aristotle, Isocrates, Cicero, and Quintilian. Part II offers a rich array of political speeches that are grouped thematically. Hence the book as a whole strives to treat both the theory and the practice of rhetoric in a reasonably synoptic way. After its survey of the classical foundations of rhetoric, Part I turns to consider the three principal kinds of rhetoric according to Aristotle, a division that may have been supplemented but has never been superseded in the study of the subject. First, deliberative rhetoric issues in speeches of exhortation or dissuasion, either to pursue or to shun a given course of action, and is most concerned with questions of some future good (advantage) and future harm (disadvantage). Any speech in a deliberative assembly would qualify. Second, epideictic rhetoric (also called “display” or “ceremonial”) issues in speeches of blame or praise – a funeral oration, for example – and is most concerned with what is noble and base. And although epideictic speeches may deal with any time period, with past acts or future consequences, Aristotle contends that it deals mostly with the here-and-now. Finally, judicial rhetoric (or “forensic”) issues in speeches of accusation or defense, deals with questions of justice and injustice, and is most concerned with the past: did the defendant commit an unjust act on the date in question? Here we include both Aristotle’s discussion of each of the kinds of rhetoric together with political speeches meant to exemplify them. Part I takes up next Aristotle’s classic accounts of the three kinds of “proofs” or “modes of persuasion” (pisteis) that characterize all rhetoric: those that speak to the passion of the audience, or pathos; those that establish the good character, or ethos, of the speaker; and finally the speech qua speech, the logos, with the persuasive powers peculiar to it as a matter of (rhetorical) logic. Part I concludes with a brief treatment, again following Aristotle, of matters of diction or style (lexis) and its rhetorical effects. Part II is devoted entirely to political speeches. We focus on political occasions when rhetoric is especially important, limiting our choices to speeches dealing with two ongoing political movements in the United States (Civil Rights and the Women’s Movement); speeches addressing political crises or dealing with urgent matters of war and peace; speeches made in the context of peaceful changes of political leadership; and finally, mindful of the fact that rhetoric also plays a powerful, if disturbing, role in tyrannies and authoritarian regimes, we have included examples of such speeches. Accordingly, although many of the speeches in this volume are rightly celebrated as peaks of the art of rhetoric, not all can be considered great because also good: they may in some cases be notorious or ugly or perfidious and so exemplify the power of rhetoric in its repellent forms. Moreover, in attempting to keep the scope of our book in bounds – it could easily be three times its present length – we limited ourselves

Introduction

8

to speeches, as distinguished from, say, private communications, newspaper editorials, or Supreme Court cases, and to political ones broadly understood. In most instances, the speeches were actually delivered, live or through an electronic medium, to an audience; the main exceptions to this are the selections from Shakespeare (although even these are of course routinely delivered to live audiences). The works collected here are of course only an introduction to the extraordinary range of political speeches. But we hope that setting forth the theoretical principles of rhetoric as exemplified by actual speeches will serve as invitation to further reading and reflection. *** According to Aristotle, who is our touchstone in the matter of rhetoric, a human being is by nature the political animal and the rational animal, that is, the only animal naturally possessed of articulate speech or reason, as the relevant Greek term (logos) can be translated. Yet these two apparently different definitions of a human being are but sides of the same coin. Because we alone among the animals are able to express not just pleasure and pain but also “the advantageous and the harmful and hence also the just and the unjust,”17 we alone among them are also capable of forming the communities that have at their core our shared moral convictions, expressed in speech, about matters just and unjust: political communities properly speaking. Human beings are by nature the political animal because we are the only animal equipped with logos. If it is somewhat misleading to say on this ground that a human being is by nature the rational animal, since so few of us can often claim that high title for ourselves, it is probably better for now to split the difference between the two meanings of logos – “speech” and “reason” – and say that we are by nature the rhetorical animal. To try to lessen the gap between our speech and our reason, to hone our words so that our passions or actions become more aligned with our reason, is one compelling incentive today to undertake the study of the art of rhetoric.

17

Aristotle, Politics 1253a14–15.

Part I WHAT IS RHETORIC?

1 Classical Foundations

1.  Socrates’ Account of Rhetoric: Plato, gorgias 463a–c, 464b–465d 1 In the course of a lengthy and sometimes heated conversation with the famous teacher of rhetoric, Gorgias of Leontini, and his two admirers, Polus and Callicles, Socrates is at one point asked to state frankly his own view of what rhetoric is. What follows is the core of that view, which Socrates does not hesitate to state before acolytes of rhetoric in general and of Gorgias’ version of it in particular. Socrates: Well, in my opinion, Gorgias, [rhetoric] is a certain practice that is not characterized by art [technē] but rather belongs to a soul that is skilled at guessing, is courageous, and is naturally clever at associating with human beings. And I call the core of it flattery. Of this practice [of flattery] there are in my opinion many other parts, one of these being the art of fancy cooking, which is held to be an art but, as my argument has it, is not an art but the product of experience and a knack. I call rhetoric a part of this too, as well as cosmetics and sophistry, these four parts being related to four things […] So now, I’ll try, if I can, to set forth more clearly what I mean. There being two things of concern [namely, body and soul], I say there are two arts belonging to them. I call the art that pertains to the soul “politics”; as for the art pertaining to the body, I can’t give you one name for it in this way, but I do say that, while the care of the body is one, there are two parts to it: physical training, on one hand, and medicine, on the other; and that, in the case of the political art, the art of legislation is comparable to physical training, and justice is the counterpart to medicine. Now each of these two shares something with the other, since they are concerned with the same thing – medicine has something in common with physical training and justice with legislation – but nonetheless they differ somewhat from one another. So these are four, and they always exercise their care, some of them as regards the body, the others the soul, and with an eye to what’s best. 1

Translated by Robert C. Bartlett, for this volume.

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What is Rhetoric?

12

When flattery perceived this – I don’t say by knowing but rather by guessing – it made a four-fold distribution of itself, slipping in under each part, and it claims to be this that it slipped in under. It gives no thought for what is best but hunts after what is foolish, using what is most pleasant at a given moment, and it is deceptive such that it’s held to be of the greatest worth. Fancy cookery, then, has slipped in under medicine and claims to know what the best foods are for the body so that if a fancy cook and a doctor should have to contend among children (or among men who are as foolish as children) as to which of the two understands foods good and bad, the doctor or the cook, the doctor would die of starvation. This is what I call flattery, and I contend that such a thing is shameful, Polus – for I’m saying this to you – because it aims at the pleasant rather than the best. I deny that it’s an art but is rather a product of experience because it doesn’t have any reasoned account of the nature of what it treats or of its treatments, the result being that it cannot state the cause of each. And I don’t call an art something that is without a reasoned account. But if you disagree about these things, I’m willing to supply a reasoned account about them. Under medicine, as I’m saying, lies the flattery that is fancy cooking, and under physical training in this same manner lies cosmetics – a thing evil, deceptive, ill-born, and illiberal – deceiving by its shapes, colors, smoothness, and clothing so that, assuming a foreign beauty, they prompt one to neglect the beauty that is properly one’s own through physical training. So as not to speak at length, I’m willing to speak to you just as geometers do – for perhaps you might already be following along – to the effect that what cosmetics is to physical training, sophistry is to the art of legislation, and what fancy cooking is to medicine, rhetoric is to justice. As I was saying, however, these things differ by nature in this way, but since sophists and rhetors are close to one another they are jumbled together in the same place and concerning the same things, and they don’t know what use they’ll make of themselves nor do other human beings know what use they’ll make of them. For if the soul were not set in command over the body, but rather the body over itself, and fancy cooking and medicine were not observed and distinguished by the soul, but the body itself judged by weighing the gratifications at issue for itself, the saying of Anaxagoras would be very much to the point, dear Polus – for you are experienced in these things – that “all things would be jumbled together in the same place,” matters of medicine and health and fancy cooking being indistinguishable from one another. So, then, what I assert the art of rhetoric is, you have heard: it’s the counterpart of fancy cooking in the soul, just as such cooking is the counterpart of rhetoric in the body.

2. Aristotle,

art of rhetoric

1.1–3 (excerpts) 2

Book 1, Chapter 1 Rhetoric is a counterpart of dialectic. For both rhetoric and dialectic are concerned with those sorts of things that are in a way commonly available to the cognizance of quite all people and that do not belong to a distinct science. Hence all people do in a

2

Source: Aristotle, Art of Rhetoric, ed. and trans. Robert C. Bartlett (University of Chicago Press, 2019). All selections from Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric are from this edition and are used by permission. All rights reserved.

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way share in both rhetoric and dialectic, for everyone to some extent attempts both to scrutinize an argument and to maintain one, and to speak in both self-defense and accusation. […] Rhetoric is useful because what is true and what is just are by nature superior to their opposites, such that, if the judgments [rendered in a given instance] do not accord with what is proper, it is necessarily the case that they are defeated on account of their opposites [i.e., by falsehood and injustice]. And this is deserving of censure. Further, in the case of some people, not even if we should have the most precise science would it be an easy thing to persuade them by speaking on the basis of it. For an argument that accords with science [amounts to] teaching, but this is impossible [in their case]; it is necessary, rather, to fashion modes of persuasion and speeches through commonly available things, just as we were saying also in the Topics concerning engagement with the many. And further, one must be able to persuade others of opposites, just as is the case also with syllogisms, not so that we may do both – for one must not persuade others of base things – but so that it not escape our notice how the matter stands and how, when someone else uses arguments unjustly, we ourselves may be able to counter them. Now none of the other arts forms syllogisms of opposites: dialectic and rhetoric alone do this, for both are similarly concerned with opposites. […] In addition to these considerations, it is strange if it is a shameful thing not to be able to come to one’s own aid with one’s body but not a shameful thing to be unable to do so by means of argument, which is to a greater degree a human being’s own than is the use of the body. And if someone using such a capacity of argument should do great harm, this, at least, is common to all good things – except virtue – and especially so in the case of the most useful things, such as strength, health, wealth, [and] generalship. For someone using these things justly would perform the greatest benefits – and unjustly, the greatest harm. […] Chapter 2 Let rhetoric, then, be a capacity to observe what admits of being persuasive in each case, for this is the task of no other art. Each of the others is an art of teaching and persuading about whatever underlies it – for example, medicine is concerned with the things productive of health and illness; geometry with the characteristics accruing to magnitudes; arithmetic, with numbers; and similarly as regards the other arts and sciences. But rhetoric seems to be the capacity to observe what is persuasive concerning any given matter, so to speak. Hence we assert that its technical skill is not concerned with any particular, definite class. […] Of the modes of persuasion [or proofs] supplied by a speech, there are three forms: some reside in the character of the speaker; some in how the listener is disposed; and some in the argument itself, by establishing or appearing to establish something. [Modes of persuasion arise] through one’s character, whenever the speech is stated in such a way as to render the speaker deserving of credence. For to those who are decent we give credence to a greater degree and more quickly concerning everything in general, but in those matters that are imprecise and leave room for doubt, we give credence to them even completely. And such credence should arise through the speech rather than on account of one’s prior opinion that the speaker is a fellow of a certain

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What is Rhetoric?

sort. For it is not as some of the technical writers have it – that in the art of rhetoric the decency of the speaker contributes indeed nothing to the persuasion. Rather, character wields pretty much the greatest authority, so to speak, when it comes to persuasion. [Modes of persuasion arise also] through the listeners, when they are led by the speech to a given passion, for we do not render similar judgments when we are pained and when delighted or when feeling friendly and when feeling hatred. It is with this [appeal to the passions] alone, we contend, that technical writers at present attempt to concern themselves. Now what pertains to these things, each in turn, will be made clear when we speak about the passions. People also lend credence to something on account of arguments, when we establish what is true or what appears to be, on the basis of those things that induce persuasion in each case. Since modes of persuasion arise through these things, it is manifest that grasping them belongs to someone capable of forming syllogisms; and of reflecting on what concerns characters and the virtues; and, third, [of reflecting on] the passions – both what each of the passions is and what sort of thing it is, and from what they come to be present and how they do so. As a result, it turns out that rhetoric is a sort of offshoot of dialectic and of the concern with characters, and this [latter] concern can be justly addressed as the political art [or science]. Hence rhetoric even slips in under the rubric of the political art [or science], as do those who lay claim to [a knowledge of rhetoric], partly through a lack of education, partly through boasting and other, characteristically human, causes. For rhetoric is a certain part of dialectic and is similar to it, just as we said when we began: neither rhetoric nor dialectic is a science concerned with how any particular subject stands, but they are instead certain capacities for supplying arguments. What concerns their capacity, then, and how they stand vis-àvis one another, has for the most part been stated adequately. Chapter 3 Of rhetoric there are three kinds in number, for such is also the number of those who listen to speeches. Now the speech is composed of three things: the speaker; and that about which he speaks; and the person to whom he speaks. And the goal of the speech is relative to this person (I mean the listener). It is necessarily the case that the listener is either an onlooker or a judge, and a judge either of past events or of future ones. An assemblyman is an example of one who judges about future events, whereas a juror is an example of one who judges about past events; he who judges [the speaker’s] capacity is simply an onlooker. There would as a necessary result be three kinds of speeches that are rhetorical: deliberative, judicial, and epideictic. To the deliberative belongs exhortation and dissuasion, for both those who advise in private and those who speak out in the common assembly always do one or the other of these. To the judicial speech belongs accusation and defense, for litigants necessarily do one or the other of these. To the epideictic speech belongs praise and blame. The times belonging to each of these are, in the case of one who advises, the future (for he advises about future events, whether he exhorts or dissuades); in the case of the juror, it is the past (for he who accuses and he who defends is always concerned with deeds done); and in the case of epideictic rhetoric, the most authoritative consideration is the present, for all people praise or blame in reference to the given circumstances, though they often make additional use also of recollections of past events and of conjectures in anticipation of future ones.

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The goal in each of these is different – in fact there are three goals for the three [kinds of rhetoric]: to him who advises it is the advantageous and the harmful (for he who exhorts is advising something on the grounds that it is better, he who dissuades does so on the grounds that it is worse); all else they take as subordinate to this, either that something is just or unjust, or noble or base. For those who speak in courtrooms, the goal is the just and the unjust, and they take all else as subordinate to these. For those who praise and blame, the goal is the noble and the base, and they refer all else to these. And there is a sign that what has been stated is the goal for each of these, for when it comes to the other matters, they sometimes would not dispute them – for example, someone being tried in court might not dispute that something happened or that he did harm thereby. But that he committed an injustice he would never agree to, for in that case there would be no need of a trial. And similarly, those who advise often let drop the other matters, but that what they are advising is disadvantageous, or that what they are dissuading from is advantageous – this they would not agree to. But that it is not unjust to enslave neighbors and those who have committed no injustice, they often give no thought to at all. And similarly, both those who praise and those who blame do not examine whether someone acted advantageously or harmfully, but they often praise him because, in slighting what was profitable for himself, he acted because it was noble to do so – for example, they praise Achilles because he came to the aid of his comrade Patroclus, knowing that he himself must die, when it was otherwise possible for him to live. To him, then, such a death was nobler, whereas continuing to live was advantageous. […]

3. Cicero, “ on

oratorical partitions ”

(excerpts) 3

The following selection comes from a dialogue between Cicero and his son, who asks a series of questions of his father about the different parts of rhetoric. Cicero maintains that rhetoric has three parts: (1) the power of the speaker, which chiefly consists in ideas and words; (2) the speech itself, which consists of an introduction, the narration of facts, the production of belief, and the conclusion or the peroration; and (3) the subject, which can be either general in scope or deal with particular persons or circumstances. The following excerpts deal with the first two parts of oratory. Cicero’s Son:  I understand you now as far as simple expressions go; now I ask about words in combination. Cicero:  There is a certain rhythm which must be observed in such combination, and a certain order in which words must follow one another. Our ears themselves measure the rhythm; and guard against your failing to fill up with the requisite words the sentence which you have begun, and against your being too exuberant on the other hand. But the order in which words follow one another is laid down to prevent an oration being a confused medley of genders, numbers, tenses, persons, and cases; for, as in simple words, that which is not Latin, so in combined expressions, that which is not well arranged, deserves to be blamed. 3

Source: The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, trans. C.D. Yonge, 4 vols. (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1913–21), vol. iv.

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What is Rhetoric?

But there are these five lights, as it were, which are common to both single words and combined expressions, – they must be clear, concise, probable, intelligible, agreeable. Clearness is produced by common words, appropriate, well arranged, in a well-rounded period: on the other hand, obscurity is caused by either too great length, or a too great contraction of the sentence; or by ambiguity; or by any misuse or alteration of the ordinary sense of the words. But brevity is produced by simple words, by speaking only once of each point, by aiming at no one object except speaking clearly. But an oration is credible, if it is not too highly decorated and polished; if there is authority and thought in its expressions; if its sentiments are either dignified, or else consistent with the opinions and customs of men. But an oration is brilliant, if expressions are used which are chosen with gravity, and used in metaphorical and hyperbolical senses; and if it is also full of words suited to the circumstances, and reiterated, and having the same sense, and not inconsistent with the subject under discussion, and with the imitation of things: for this is one part of an oration which almost brings the actual circumstances before our eyes; for then the sense is most easily arrived at: but still the other senses also, and especially the mind itself, can be influenced by it. But the things which have been said about a clear speech, all have reference also to the brilliant one which we are now speaking of; for this is only a kind somewhat more brilliant than that which I have called clear. By one kind we are made to understand, but by the other one we actually appear to see. But the kind of speaking which is agreeable, consists first of all of an elegance and pleasantness of sounding and sweet words; secondly, of a combination which has no harsh unions of words, nor any disjoined and open vowels; and it must also be bounded with limited periods, and in paragraphs easily to be pronounced, and full of likeness and equality in the sentences. Then again, arguments derived from contrary expressions must be added; so that repetitions must answer to repetitions; like to like: and expressions must be added, repeated, redoubled, and even very frequently reiterated: the construction of the sentences must at one time be compacted by means of conjunctions, and at another relaxed by separation of the clauses. For an oration becomes agreeable when you say anything unexpected, or unheard of, or novel; for whatever excites wonder gives pleasure. And that oration especially influences the hearer which unites several affections of the mind; and which indicate the amiable manners of the orator himself; which are represented either by signifying his own opinion, and showing it to proceed from a humane and liberal disposition, or by a turn in the language, when for the sake either of extolling another or of disparaging himself, the orator seems to say one thing and mean another, and that too seems to be done out of courtesy rather than out of levity. But there are many rules for sweetness in speaking, which may make a speech either more obscure or less probable; therefore, while on this topic, we must decide for ourselves what the cause requires […] Son:  Since, then, you have thus explained all the power of an orator, what have you to tell me about the rules for an oration. Cicero:  That there are four divisions in an oration; of which the first and last are of avail to excite such and such feelings in the mind; for they are to be excited by the openings and perorations of speeches: the second is narration: and the third, being confirmation, adds credibility to a speech. But although amplification has its own proper place, being often in the opening of a speech, and almost always at the end,

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still it may be employed also in other parts of the speech especially when any point has been established, or when the orator has been finding fault with something. Therefore, it is of the very greatest influence in producing belief. For amplification is a sort of vehement argumentation; the one being used for the sake of teaching, the other with the object of acting on the feelings. Son:  Proceed, then, to explain to me these four divisions in regular order. Cicero:  I will do so; and I will begin with the opening of a speech, which is usually derived either from the persons concerned, or from the circumstances of the case. And openings are employed with three combined objects, that we may be listened to with friendly feelings, intelligently and attentively. And the first topic employed in openings has reference to ourselves, to our judges, and to our adversaries; from which we aim at laying the foundations of good-will towards us, either by our own merits, or by our dignity, or by some kind of virtue, and especially by the qualities of liberality, duty, justice, and good faith; and also by imputing opposite qualities to our adversaries, and by intimating that the judges themselves have some interest on our side, either in existence, or in prospect. And if any hatred has been excited against, or any offence been given by us, we then apply ourselves to remove or diminish that, by denying or extenuating the cause, or by atoning for it, or by deprecating hostility. But in order that we may be listened to in an intelligent and attentive manner, we must begin with the circumstances of the case themselves. But the hearer learns and understands what the real point in dispute is most easily if you, from the first beginning of your speech, embrace the whole genus and nature of the cause, – if you define it, and divide it, and neither perplex his discernment by the confusion, nor his memory by the multitude, of the several parts of your discourse; and all the things which will presently be said about lucid narration may also with propriety be considered as bearing on this division too. But that we may be listened to with attention, we must do one of these things. For we must advance some propositions which are either important, or necessary, or connected with the interests of those before whom the discussion is proceeding. This also may be laid down as a rule, that, if ever the time itself, or the facts of the case, or the place, or the intervention of any one, or any interruption, or anything which may have been said by the adversary, and especially in his peroration, has given us any opportunity of saying anything well suited to the occasion, we must on no account omit it. And many of the rules, which we give in their proper place, about amplification, may be transferred here to the consideration of the opening of a speech. Son:  What next? What rules, then, are to be attended to in narration? Cicero:  Since narration is an explanation of facts, and a sort of base and foundation for the establishment of belief, those rules are most especially to be observed in it, which apply also, for the most part, to the other divisions of speaking; part of which are necessary, and part are assumed for the sake of embellishment. For it is necessary for us to narrate events in a clear and probable manner; but we must also attend to an agreeable style. Therefore, in order to narrate with clearness, we must go back to those previous rules for explaining and illustrating facts, in which brevity is enjoined and taught. And brevity is one of the points most frequently praised in narration, and we have already dwelt enough upon it. Again, our narrative will be probable, if the things which are related are consistent with the character of the persons concerned, with the times and places

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What is Rhetoric?

mentioned, – if the cause of every fact and event is stated, – if they appear to be proved by witnesses, – if they are in accordance with the opinions and authority of men, with law, with custom, and with religion, – if the honesty of the narrator is established, his candor, his memory, the uniform truth of his conversation, and the integrity of his life. Again, a narration is agreeable which contains subjects calculated to excite admiration, expectation, unlooked-for results, sudden feelings of the mind, conversations between people, grief, anger, fear, joy, desires. However, let us proceed to what follows. Son:  What follows is, I suppose, what relates to producing belief. Cicero:  Just so; and those topics are divided into confirmation and reprehension. For in confirmation we seek to establish our own assertion; in reprehension, to invalidate those of our adversaries. Since, then, everything which is ever the subject of a dispute, is so because the question is raised whether it exists or not, or what it is, or of what character it is; in the first question conjecture has weight, in the second, definition, and in the third, reasoning […] Son:  The end of the oration remains to be spoken of by you; and that is included in the peroration, which I wish to hear you explain? Cicero:  The explanation of the peroration is easy; for it is divided into two parts, amplification and enumeration. And the proper place for amplification is in the peroration, and also in the course of the oration there are opportunities of digressing for the purpose of amplification, by corroborating or refuting something which has been previously said. Amplification, then, is a kind of graver affirmation, which by exciting feelings in the mind conciliates belief to one’s assertion. It is produced by the kind of words used, and by the facts dwelt upon. Expressions are to be used which have a power of illustrating the oration; yet such as are not unusual, but weighty, full-sounding, sonorous, compound, well-invented, and well-applied, not vulgar; borrowed from other subjects, and often metaphorical, not consisting of single words, but dissolved into several clauses, which are uttered without any conjunction between them, so as to appear more numerous. Amplification is also obtained by repetition, by iteration, by redoubling words, and by gradually rising from lower to loftier language; and it must be altogether a natural and lively sort of speech, made up of dignified language, well suited to give a high idea of the subject spoken of. This then is amplification as far as language goes. To the language there must be adapted expression of tone, of countenance, and gesture, all in harmony together and calculated to rouse the feelings of the hearers. But the cause must be maintained both by language and action, and carried on according to circumstances. For, because these appear very absurd when they are more vehement than the subject will bear, we must diligently consider what is becoming to each separate speaker, and in each separate case […] Enumeration remains; a topic sometimes necessary to a panegyrist, not often to one who is endeavoring to persuade; and more frequently to a prosecutor than to a defendant. It has two turns, if you either distrust the recollection of those men before whom you are pleading, either on account of the length of time that has elapsed since the circumstances of which you are speaking, or because of the length of your speech; in this case your cause will have the more strength if you bring up numberless corroborative arguments to strengthen your speech, and explain them with brevity. And the defendant will have less frequent occasion to use them,

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because he has to lay down propositions which are contrary to them: and his defense will come out best if it is brief, and full of pungent stings. But in enumeration, it will be necessary to avoid letting it have the air of a childish display of memory; and he will best avoid that fault who does not recapitulate every trifle, but who touches on each particular briefly, and dwells only on the more weighty and important points.

4.  Quintilian, “What is Rhetoric?” 4 institutes of oratory (excerpts) The following excerpt is from Institutes of Oratory (c. ad 95), the only surviving work by the Roman rhetorician Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (c. ad 35 – c. 100). This comprehensive account of rhetoric influenced St. Augustine, St. Jerome, Martin Luther, Erasmus, Montaigne, and John Stuart Mill, among others. Book 2, Chapter 15 [1] The first question which confronts us is “What is rhetoric?” Many definitions have been given; but the problem is really twofold. For the dispute turns either on the quality of the thing itself or on the meaning of the words in which it is defined. The first and chief disagreement on the subject is found in the fact that some think that even bad men may be called orators, while others, of whom I am one, restrict the name of orator and the art itself to those who are good. [2] Of those who divorce eloquence from that yet fairer and more desirable title to renown, a virtuous life, some call rhetoric merely a power, some a science, but not a virtue, some a practice, some an art, though they will not allow the art to have anything in common with science or virtue, while some again call it a perversion of art or kakotechnia. [3] These persons have as a rule held that the task of oratory lies in persuasion or speaking in a persuasive manner: for this is within the power of a bad man no less than a good. Hence we get the common definition of rhetoric as the power of persuading. What I call a power, many call a capacity, and some a faculty. In order therefore that there may be no misunderstanding I will say that by power I mean dunamis. [4] This view is derived from Isocrates, if indeed the treatise on rhetoric which circulates under his name is really from his hand. He, although far from agreeing with those whose aim is to disparage the duties of an orator, somewhat rashly defined rhetoric as peithous demiourgos, the “worker of persuasion”: for I cannot bring myself to use the peculiar derivative which Ennius applies to Marcus Cethegus in the phrase suadae medulla, the “marrow of persuasion.” [5] Again Gorgias, in the dialogue of Plato that takes its title from his name, says practically the same thing, but Plato intends it to be taken as the opinion of Gorgias, not as his own. Cicero in more than one passage defined the duty of an orator as “speaking in a persuasive manner.” [6] In his Rhetorica too, a work which it is clear gave him no satisfaction, he makes the end to be persuasion. But many other things have the power of persuasion, such as 4

Source: The Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian, trans. Harold Edgeworth Butler, 4 vols. (London: William Heinemann, 1920), vol. i.

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What is Rhetoric?

money, influence, the authority and rank of the speaker, or even some sight unsupported by language, when for instance the place of words is supplied by the memory of some individual’s great deeds, by his lamentable appearance or the beauty of his person. [7] Thus when Antonius in the course of his defense of Manius Aquilius tore open his client’s robe and revealed the honorable scars which he had acquired while facing his country’s foes, he relied no longer on the power of his eloquence, but appealed directly to the eyes of the Roman people. And it is believed that they were so profoundly moved by the sight as to acquit the accused. [8] Again there is a speech of Cato, to mention no other records, which informs us that Servius Galba escaped condemnation solely by the pity which he aroused not only by producing his own young children before the assembly, but by carrying round in his arms the son of Sulpicius Gallus. [9] So also according to general opinion Phryne was saved not by the eloquence of Hyperides, admirable as it was, but by the sight of her exquisite body, which she further revealed by drawing aside her tunic. And if all these have power to persuade, the end of oratory, which we are discussing, cannot adequately be defined as persuasion. [10] Consequently those who, although holding the same general view of rhetoric, have regarded it as the power of persuasion by speaking, pride themselves on their greater exactness of language. This definition is given by Gorgias, in the dialogue mentioned above, under compulsion from the inexorable logic of Socrates. Theodectes agrees with him, whether the treatise on rhetoric which has come down to us under his name is really by him or, as is generally believed, by Aristotle. In that work the end of rhetoric is defined as the leading of men by the power of speech to the conclusion desired by the orator. [11] But even this definition is not sufficiently comprehensive, since others besides orators persuade by speaking or lead others to the conclusion desired, as for example harlots, flatterers and seducers. On the other hand the orator is not always engaged on persuasion, so that sometimes persuasion is not his special object, while sometimes it is shared by others who are far removed from being orators. [12] And yet Apollodorus is not very far off this definition when he asserts that the first and all-important task of forensic oratory is to persuade the judge and lead his mind to the conclusions desired by the speaker. For even Apollodorus makes the orator the sport of fortune by refusing him leave to retain his title if he fails to persuade. [13] Some on the other hand pay no attention to results, as for example Aristotle, who says “rhetoric is the power of discovering all means of persuading by speech.” This definition has not merely the fault already mentioned, but the additional defect of including merely the power of invention, which without style cannot possibly constitute oratory. [14] Hermagoras, who asserts that its end is to speak persuasively, and others who express the same opinion, though in different words, and inform us that the end is to say everything which ought to be said with a view to persuasion, have been sufficiently answered above, when I proved that persuasion was not the privilege of the orator alone. [15] Various additions have been made to these definitions. For some hold that rhetoric is concerned with everything, while some restrict its activity to politics. The question as to which of these views is the nearer to the truth shall be discussed later in its appropriate place. [16] Aristotle seems to have implied that the sphere of the orator was all-inclusive when he defined rhetoric as the power to detect every element in any given subject which might conduce to persuasion; so too does Patrocles who omits the words

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in any given subject, but since he excludes nothing, shows that his view is identical. For he defines rhetoric as the power to discover whatever is persuasive in speech. These  definitions like that quoted above include no more than the power of invention alone. Theodorus avoids this fault and holds that it is the power to discover and to utter forth in elegant language whatever is credible in every subject of oratory. [17] But, while others besides orators may discover what is credible as well as persuasive, by adding the words in every subject he, to a greater extent than the others, concedes the fairest name in all the world to those who use their gifts as an incitement to crime. [18] Plato makes Gorgias say that he is a master of persuasion in the lawcourts and other assemblies, and that his themes are justice and injustice, while in reply Socrates allows him the power of persuading, but not of teaching. [19] Those who refused to make the sphere of oratory all inclusive, have been obliged to make somewhat forced and long-winded distinctions: among these I may mention Ariston, the pupil of the Peripatetic Critolaus, who produced the following definition, “Rhetoric is the science of seeing and uttering what ought to be said on political questions in language that is likely to prove persuasive to the people.” [20] Being a Peripatetic he regards it as a science, not, like the Stoics, as a virtue, while in adding the words “likely to prove persuasive to the people” he inflicts a positive insult on oratory, in implying that it is not likely to persuade the learned. The same criticism will apply to all those who restrict oratory to political questions, for they exclude thereby a large number of the duties of an orator, as for example panegyric, the third department of oratory, which is entirely ignored. [21] Turning to those who regard rhetoric as an art, but not as a virtue, we find that Theodorus of Gadara is more cautious. For he says (I quote the words of his translators), “rhetoric is the art which discovers and judges and expresses, with an elegance duly proportioned to the importance of all such elements of persuasion as may exist in any subject in the field of politics.” [22] Similarly Cornelius Celsus defines the end of rhetoric as to speak persuasively on any doubtful subject within the field of politics. Similar definitions are given by others, such for instance as the following: “rhetoric is the power of judging and holding forth on such political subjects as come before it with a certain persuasiveness, a certain action of the body and delivery of the words.” [23] There are countless other definitions, either identical with this or composed of the same elements, which I shall deal with when I come to the questions concerned with the subject matter of rhetoric. Some regard it as neither a power, a science or an art; Critolaus calls it the practice of speaking (for this is the meaning of tribē), Athenaeus styles it the art of deceiving, [24] while the majority, content with reading a few passages from the Gorgias of Plato, unskillfully excerpted by earlier writers, refrain from studying that dialogue and the remainder of Plato’s writings, and thereby fall into serious error. For they believe that in Plato’s view rhetoric was not an art, but a certain adroitness in the production of delight and gratification, [25] or with reference to another passage the shadow of a small part of politics and the fourth department of flattery. For Plato assigns two departments of politics to the body, namely medicine and gymnastic, and two to the soul, namely law and justice, while he styles the art of cookery a form of flattery of medicine, the art of the slave-dealer a flattery of gymnastic, for they produce a false complexion by the use of paint and a false robustness by puffing them out with fat: sophistry he calls a dishonest counterfeit of legal science, and rhetoric of justice.

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[26] All these statements occur in the Gorgias and are uttered by Socrates who appears to be the mouthpiece of the views held by Plato. But some of his dialogues were composed merely to refute his opponents and are styled refutative, while others are for the purpose of teaching and are called doctrinal. [27] Now it is only rhetoric as practiced in their own day that is condemned by Plato or Socrates, for he speaks of it as “the manner in which you engage in public affairs”: rhetoric in itself he regards as a genuine and honorable thing, and consequently the controversy with Gorgias ends with the words, “The rhetorician therefore must be just and the just man desirous to do what is just.” [28] To this Gorgias makes no reply, but the argument is taken up by Polus, a hot-headed and headstrong young fellow, and it is to him that Socrates makes his remarks about “shadows” and “forms of flattery.” Then Callicles, who is even more hot-headed, intervenes, but is reduced to the conclusion that “he who would truly be a rhetorician ought to be just and possess a knowledge of justice.” It is clear therefore that Plato does not regard rhetoric as an evil, but holds that true rhetoric is impossible for any save a just and good man. In the Phaedrus [29] he makes it even clearer that the complete attainment of this art is impossible without the knowledge of justice, an opinion in which I heartily concur. Had this not been his view, would he have ever written the Apology of Socrates or the Funeral Oration [i.e., the Menexenus] in praise of those who had died in battle for their country, both of them works falling within the sphere of oratory? [30] It was against the class of men who employed their glibness of speech for evil purposes that he directed his denunciations. Similarly Socrates thought it incompatible with his honor to make use of the speech which Lysias composed for his defense, although it was the usual practice in those days to write speeches for the parties concerned to speak in the courts on their own behalf, a device designed to circumvent the law which forbade the employment of advocates. [31] Further the teachers of rhetoric were regarded by Plato as quite unsuited to their professed task. For they divorced rhetoric from justice and preferred plausibility to truth, as he states in the Phaedrus. […] [33] For my part, I have undertaken the task of molding the ideal orator, and as my first desire is that he should be a good man, I will return to those who have sounder opinions on the subject. Some identify rhetoric with politics, Cicero calls it a department of the science of politics (and science of politics and philosophy are identical terms), while others again call it a branch of philosophy, among them Isocrates. [34] The definition which best suits its real character is that which makes rhetoric the science of speaking well. For this definition includes all the virtues of oratory and the character of the orator as well, since no man can speak well who is not good himself. [35] The definition given by Chrysippus, who derived it from Cleanthes, to the effect that it is the science of speaking rightly, amounts to the same thing. The same philosopher also gives other definitions, but they concern problems of a different character from that on which we are now engaged. Another definition defines oratory as the power of persuading men to do what ought to be done, and yields practically the same sense save that it limits the art to the result which it produces. […] [37] Finally those critics who hold that the aim of rhetoric is to think and speak rightly, were on the correct track. These are practically all the most celebrated and most discussed definitions of rhetoric. It would be both irrelevant and beyond my power to deal with all. For I strongly disapprove of the custom which has come to

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prevail among writers of text-books of refusing to define anything in the same terms as have been employed by some previous writer. I will have nothing to do with such ostentation. [38] What I say will not necessarily be my own invention, but it will be what I believe to be the right view, as for instance that oratory is the science of speaking well. For when the most satisfactory definition has been found, he who seeks another, is merely looking for a worse one. Thus much being admitted we are now in a position to see clearly what is the end, the highest aim, the ultimate goal of rhetoric, that telos in fact which every art must possess. For if rhetoric is the science of speaking well, its end and highest aim is to speak well.

2 The Three Kinds of Rhetoric According to Aristotle

Deliberative Rhetoric 1. Aristotle,

art of rhetoric

1.4, 6, 8 (excerpts)

Book 1, Chapter 4 First, then, one must grasp the sorts of good or bad things the advisor gives advice about, since he is concerned not with all of them but only with so many good and bad things as may or may not come into being. But as for all those that either are or will be of necessity, or for which it is impossible that they either be or come to be – about these there will be no advice. Indeed, the advisor is not even concerned with quite all the things that admit of coming into being, for there are some goods, among those that may or may not come into being, that are by nature or from chance, and about these the giving of advice is pointless. But it is clear that the advisor is concerned with all such things as there is deliberation about, and these are all such things as can by their nature be traced back to us, the beginning of whose coming-into-being is up to us. For we investigate matters up to that point at which we discover whether they are possible or impossible for us to carry out. […] As for the things all people deliberate about, and the things advisors speak about in public, the most important of them happen to be five in number. These are what concerns revenues; and war and peace; and, further, what concerns the guarding of the territory; and imports and exports; and legislation. As a result, he who is going to give advice about revenues must know what and how many are the city’s sources of income so that, if something is deficient, it may be added to, and if it has fallen short it may be increased. Further, he must know quite all of the city’s expenses, so that if any is superfluous, it may be removed and if any is too great, it may be reduced. For it is not only by adding to what is available to them that people become wealthier, but also by removing expenses. It is possible to gain a synoptic view of these things, not only from one’s experience dealing with private affairs, but, with a view to giving advice about them, it is also necessary to be a skilled inquirer into the discoveries made by others. 24

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Chapter 6 Now since it has been posited that the target for someone giving advice is the advantageous (and people do not deliberate about the end but rather about the things conducive to the end, and these are things advantageous for actions), and since the advantageous is a good, it must be grasped what the elements of the good and advantageous in an unqualified sense would be. So let a good be that which is choiceworthy for its own sake, and that for the sake of which we choose something other than it, and that which all things, or all things that have sense perception or intellect, aim at (or would aim at, should they gain intellect). And all that intellect would assign to each, and all that intellect does assign to each individually – this is what is good for each; and that which, when it is present, renders each in a good condition and possessed of self-sufficiency; the good is also the self-sufficient and that which is productive or protective of such things, and that on which such sorts of things follow and that prevent or destroy their opposites. […] Chapter 8 But with a view to being able to persuade and advise in a noble manner, the greatest and most authoritative consideration of quite all is to grasp all the regimes and to distinguish the habits of each, their legal customs, and what is advantageous to each. For indeed everyone is persuaded by what is advantageous, and that which preserves the regime is to its advantage. And further, the declaration of the authoritative body is authoritative, but the authoritative bodies have been distinguished in reference to the regimes: there are as many authoritative bodies as there are regimes. And there are four regimes: democracy, oligarchy, aristocracy, [and] monarchy. As a result, that which is authoritative and judges is always some part of these, or the whole. And democracy is a regime in which they distribute offices among themselves by lot, oligarchy that in which the distribution is done on the basis of property assessments, aristocracy that in which they do so according to education (and I mean by “education” the one established by law), for those who have remained within the legal customs rule in an aristocracy, and these necessarily appear best – hence it has its name.1 Monarchy, as its name indicates, is the regime in which one person is authoritative over quite all things; and of these monarchies, the one that rules in accord with a certain ordered arrangement is kingship, the one that is unlimited is tyranny. So one must not overlook the end of each regime, for people choose the things conducive to the end. In democracy the end is freedom; in oligarchy, wealth; in aristocracy, matters pertaining to education and the legal customs; in tyranny, the protection [of the tyranny itself]. It is clear, then, that one must distinguish the habits bearing on the end of each regime, as well as the lawful conventions and advantageous things, if in fact it is in reference to this end that people make their choices. Now since modes of persuasion arise not only through demonstrative argument but also through speech pertaining to matters of character (for we trust the speaker because he appears to be of a certain sort, and this is so if he appears to be good or well-intentioned or both), we must grasp the characters belonging to each of the regimes. For it is necessarily the case that the character belonging to each regime is most persuasive to each. And these will be grasped

1

The word “best” (aristoi) forms the root of “aristocracy” – the rule of the best.

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through the same considerations: the characters are manifest in reference to the choice involved, and one’s choice refers to the end [one aims at]. Those things, then, future or present, that must be aimed at when formulating exhortations; and on the basis of what one must grasp the modes of persuasion pertaining to the advantageous; and, further, what concerns the characters and lawful customs relating to the regimes, and through what things and in what manner we will have ready access to them – these matters have been stated to the extent commensurate with the present occasion. For what concerns them has been stated precisely in the Politics.

2.  Thucydides, Corinth and Corcyra Appeal to Athens, peloponnesian war 1.31–45 (433 bc) 2 Before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 bc), tensions begin to mount between the various allies, subjects, or satellites of the “super-powers” of the day, Athens with her vast naval power and Sparta with her impressive land forces. In 435, a rather small and in itself insignificant place called Epidamnus (in present-day Armenia) is torn by civil strife. To put it to an end, the people or commoners of Epidamnus call upon its “mother city,” Corcyra, but she declines to get involved. Epidamnus then looks to Corinth for help, a city to which she has some historical connection. The Corinthians are quick to come to Epidamnus, but as soon as Corcyra gets wind of this, she immediately sends to Epidamnus and requests that the Corinthians recall the troops and others they have stationed there; she also offers to put the dispute over Epidamnus to arbitration, if need be. The Corinthians refuse. War breaks out. The Corcyraeans have the second most powerful navy in Greece – only Athens’ is larger – the Corinthians the third largest, and Corcyra manages to win the first sea battle. But she is nervous, the Corinthians are hopping mad, and, in the speeches that Thucydides records, the heretofore neutral Corcyraeans try to persuade the Athenians to admit them into the empire, while the Corinthians, very much in the Spartan camp, endeavor to prevent the Athenians from doing so. An assembly was held where the two parties made their opposing arguments and the Corcyraeans spoke first as follows. [32] “Athenians, it is only right that people who go to their neighbors asking for help, as we do now, but who have no prior claim on them arising from some great service rendered or from an alliance, should demonstrate certain things at the outset: first, and most important, that there really are advantages in what they request, or at least no positive disadvantages; and then that their lasting gratitude can be relied upon. If they do not establish these things convincingly they should not be upset if they are disappointed in their appeal. [2] Now in this case the Corcyraeans have sent us here to ask for an alliance, in the confidence that they will be able to give you firm assurances on exactly these points. 2

Source: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, ed. and trans. Jeremy Mynott (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Used by permission.

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[3] “In terms of our present request, however, this past policy of ours turns out to be both illogical from your point of view and also prejudicial to our own best interests in the current circumstances. [4] Before this we never voluntarily made an alliance with anyone, but we have now come to seek one from another party; and at the same time as a consequence of this policy we now stand isolated in our present war with the Corinthians. So what we used to think of as prudent behavior on our part – avoiding any external alliance that could expose us to sharing the risks in a neighbor’s external alliance – is now revealed as a misjudgment and a source of weakness. [5] It is true that we did single-handedly repel the Corinthians in the sea battle we had with them; but now that they have set out to attack us with a larger force drawn from the Peloponnese and the rest of Greece, we see that we are not strong enough to prevail through our own resources alone; and since it will be very dangerous for us to fall under their power, we are forced to ask for help from you and everyone else. So we should be forgiven if we now venture on a course contrary to our previous policy of non-involvement – our failure here is more a matter of judgement than character. [33] “If you accept our case you will achieve a happy combination of several results: first, you will be rendering help to people who are being wronged, not to those who are inflicting harm upon others; then, if you accept into an alliance people whose most vital interests are at stake, you can certainly expect to see abiding proofs of their gratitude; and furthermore, we have built up a navy which is greater than any but yours. [2] Just think – what could be a greater stroke of luck for you, or more irksome to your enemies, if an additional force you would have paid so much to have and would have been so grateful for comes to you of its own accord, unsolicited, and offers itself up at no risk or expense on your part, bringing you honor in the world at large, the gratitude of those you are directly helping and more power to your own cause? Few people in history have had all those opportunities at the same time; and conversely, few people seeking an alliance are in a position to offer the relationship no less in terms of security and honor than they derive from it. [3] “As to the war, in which we could be of service to you, any of you who thinks that it will not happen is deluded and is failing to understand the situation: the Spartans are ready to go to war through their fear of you; while the Corinthians, who are influential with them and hostile to you, are seeking to dispose of us first in preparation for a direct attempt on you, their intention being to prevent us uniting in a common enmity to stand against them; they mean to keep the advantage in one of two ways, either by damaging us or enlarging their own strength. [4] Our task, therefore, is to take the initiative – with an offer from us and an acceptance from you – so that we anticipate their strategy rather than reacting to it. [34] “If the Corinthians argue that you have no right to receive colonists of theirs into an alliance, they should learn the lesson that every colony which is well treated holds the mother-city in esteem but when they are wronged they become estranged. Colonists are sent out not to be the slaves but the equals of those who are left behind. [2] And it is clear enough that the Corinthians were in the wrong, because when they were invited to submit to judicial arbitration over Epidamnus they preferred to prosecute their case by act of war rather than through a fair settlement. [3] Let their behavior to us, their allies, be a clear warning to you, so that you are neither led astray by their deceit nor support any direct requests they may make. The people with the best long-term security are those with the least cause to regret doing favors to an enemy.

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[35] “Nor will you be breaking your treaty with the Spartans by accepting us since we are allies of neither side. [2] It is stipulated in the treaty that if any Greek city is not a part of any alliance they are permitted to join whichever side they please. [3] It would therefore be an outrage if they are allowed to recruit for their navy not only from those inside their alliance but also from the rest of Greece – and particularly from among your own subjects – while they debar us from an alliance that is readily available and from any other sources of help, and then call it a crime if you are persuaded to grant our request. [4] In fact it is we who will hold you far more at fault if you are not so persuaded: you will be rejecting us, though we are the ones in danger and are not your enemies, whereas they are the enemies and aggressors and not only will you be failing to stand in their way but you will actually be looking on while they build up their forces from your own empire. That cannot be right. You should either be preventing them from hiring mercenaries from within your empire or else helping us as well on whatever terms you can be persuaded to accept; but best of all would be for you openly to accept us as your allies and support us. [5] “We can point to many advantages in this, as we said at the beginning, the greatest being that you and we share the same enemies (which is the surest basis for trust) and that these enemies are by no means weak but are well able to inflict damage on those who defect from them. Moreover, it is one thing to alienate a land power offering an alliance, but quite another in the case of a naval power: you should instead do everything you can to prevent anyone else acquiring ships, and failing that you must make friends with whoever emerges as the strongest. [36] “There may be those of you who do see the advantages in what we have said but fear that to take this advice will mean breaking the treaty with Sparta. Well, they should understand that their fear if backed by strength will be frightening enough to their adversaries, whereas being confident but weak – as a result of rejecting us – will do less to intimidate an enemy who is strong. They must understand, moreover, that you are discussing the future of Athens as much as that of Corcyra, and that you will not be providing for her best interests if, in the face of a war which is imminent and all but upon us, you hesitate just for short-term considerations to acquire a place whose friendship or enmity has such momentous consequences for you. [2] Apart from the other advantages it offers, Corcyra is well situated on the coastal route to Italy and Sicily, so you could prevent any naval force coming from there to join the Peloponnesians or being sent there from here. [3] “We can summarize our overall argument in just a few words, to demonstrate why you should not abandon us. There are three navies of any significance in Greece: yours, ours, and that of the Corinthians. If you are going to stand by and let two of these come together into one unit with the Corinthians seizing us first, then you will end up fighting the combined navies of the Corinthians and the Peloponnesians; but if you accept us as allies you will be able to take them on with our ships added to yours.” [4] Such was the speech of the Corcyraeans. The Corinthians then responded as follows. [37] “We are forced to make some initial comments. These Corcyreans have not confined their speech to the question of your receiving them into an alliance but have also argued that we are the ones in the wrong and that they are the undeserving victims of war. We too therefore must address both these points before going on to the rest of the argument so that you may be the better prepared to see the merits of our claim and will have good grounds for resisting their appeals.

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[2] “They say it was ‘prudence’ on their part not to make alliances with anyone. But in fact their motives for this policy were bad ones not good, since they did not want any ally to be a witness to their crimes nor did they want to be disgraced if they called one in to help. [3] Moreover, the autonomy their city’s location provides also allows them to act as their own judges of any wrongs they inflict on others rather than to be subject to terms of legal agreement – the reason being that they hardly ever travel to their neighbors’ ports but very regularly receive visits from others who are forced to put in at Corcyra. [4] This is why they maintain this front of virtuous neutrality – not to avoid becoming involved in the crimes of others but in order to commit their own crimes alone, to use force when they have the power to do so, to take advantage when they can get away with it, and always to brazen out their gains. Yet if they were the honest men they claim to be, then the greater their immunity from attack by their neighbors the greater the chance they would have to demonstrate their good character by both offering and accepting just terms. [38] “But in fact this is not how they behave, either towards ourselves or others. Although they are colonists of ours they have all along been disaffected and are now at war with us, complaining that they were not sent out to be ill-treated. We for our part say that we did not establish the colony to be insulted by them but to be treated with proper respect as their recognized leaders. [3] We are certainly honored by our other colonies and the colonists are very devoted to us. [4] It is therefore evident that if most of these people are satisfied with us there can be no good reason why the Corcyraeans alone should be dissatisfied with us; nor are we now going to war with them without good reason, but only as a result of being seriously wronged. [5] The honorable course for them, even if we were at fault, would have been to defer to our mood of resentment, and then it would have been shameful for us to override their moderation with force. [6] But as it is, in the arrogance of their great material wealth they have wronged us time and again and never more so than in the case of our colony, Epidamnus, which they made no claim to when it was in trouble but seized when we came to its rescue and which they now hold by force. [39] “They say, of course, that they were willing at an earlier stage to have the matter decided by arbitration; but that does not count for much coming from the party with the advantage, who make their proposals from a position of security, rather than from those who act on their professions of good faith before engaging in hostilities. [2] These men, however, came forward with their fine offer of arbitration not before they had laid siege to the place but only after they realized that we would not simply stand idly by. And now they come here, after the fact of their own transgressions at Epidamnus, and effectively request that at this point you become not their allies but their accomplices in crime, and that you receive them into an alliance at a time when they are in dispute with us. [3] What they should have done was to make their approach when they were completely secure: not when we have been wronged and they are at risk; nor when you who never took a share in their power will now have to give them a share of your aid, and when you who had no part in their misdeeds will now have to bear an equal part of the blame from us; for only if they had long since made you party to their power should they have made you party to its consequences. [40] “We have shown, then, that we for our part have come here with reasonable grounds for complaint and that they are violent and grasping people. The next point you need to understand is a matter of justice – that you have no right to receive them into your alliance. [2] Even though the treaty specifies that any state not already

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included on the list can join whichever side it wishes, this provision is not meant for those who commit malicious acts of aggression against others, but for a state requesting protection when it is not at the same time defecting from some other relationship and is not about to bring war rather than peace to those taking them on as allies (if they are wise). And that is just the misfortune you may suffer if you do not listen to us now. [3] You would not just become their supporters but also our enemies, instead of our allies by treaty. We would be forced, if you join their side, to defend ourselves against you as well as against them. [4] “The right thing for you to do, surely, is to stand aside from both parties or, failing that, to take the opposite course of joining us against them. You do at least have a treaty with the Corinthians, whereas with the Corcyraeans you have never even been in a state of truce. And you should not establish the precedent of admitting as allies those who have rebelled against the other side. [5] After all, when the Samians were in revolt from you and the other Peloponnesians were split in their voting on whether they ought to give them support, we did not cast our vote against you but publicly supported the right of each power to discipline its own allies. [6] But if you are going to aid and abet wrongdoers, then you will find that just as many of your own allies will come over to our side and the precedent you establish will work more against you than against us. [41] “These then are the considerations of justice that we urge on you – and they are quite sufficient according to the laws of the Greeks; but we also have a claim on your gratitude to request. We think it is one you should grant in the present circumstances, since we are neither enemies in the business of harming each other nor yet friends with a close understanding. It is this. [2] Once, when you were short of fighting-ships for your war against Aegina before the Persian conflict, you borrowed twenty ships from us Corinthians. That good turn gave you the upper hand over the Aeginetans, just as our good turn over Samos, when we deterred the Peloponnesians from helping the Samians, gave you the chance to punish them. And these were favors given at critical times, when men are engaged with the enemy and oblivious to every consideration apart from victory. In those circumstances they count as a friend anyone who helps them, even if he was previously an enemy, and count as hostile anyone who stands in their way, even if he happens to be a friend, since in their immediate preoccupation with victory they are prepared to damage even their closest relationships. [42] “Bear these favors in mind, then, making sure the younger ones among you are told about them by the older; and recognize your obligation to support us in like manner. Don’t take the view that we may be right in what we say but that if it comes to war your advantage lies elsewhere. One’s advantage is in fact best served by making the fewest mistakes; and [2] the future prospect of war, with which the Corcyraeans are trying to scare you and lead you astray, remains just an uncertain possibility. You should not, therefore, be so carried away by that prospect that you enter into a hostile relationship with the Corinthians, which will then be a definite fact and very much in the present. The prudent course would rather be to dispel some of the prevailing suspicion over Megara. [3] A well-timed favor of that kind, however slight or late in the day, can outweigh a larger grievance. [4] And don’t be led astray by their offer of a mighty naval alliance. It is a surer source of strength to avoid wronging one’s equals than to make risky gains in the flush of excitement about some immediate prospect. [43] “Now that we find ourselves involved in the sort of situation on which we pronounced in Sparta, namely that each power should discipline its own allies, we claim

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the right to the same treatment from you – you benefited from our vote and you should not now damage us with yours. [2] Pay back like with like, recognizing that this is one of those moments which most define you as a friend or enemy, according to whether you aid or oppose. [3] Do not accept these Corcyreans as your allies in defiance of our wishes and do not support them in their crimes. [4] This is the proper course of action for you and also the policy that best serves your own interests.”

3. Demosthenes, (344–343 bc) 3

second philippic

(excerpts)

The Athenian statesman and orator Demosthenes (384–322 bc) is among the greatest rhetoricians of Greek antiquity. He is probably best known for the series of speeches (“Philippics”) he gave that warned Athens of the threat posed by Philip II of Macedon, and then by Philip’s son Alexander the Great, to Hellenic freedom in general and to Athenian democracy in particular. Demosthenes had been a member of the Athenian delegation sent to Macedon to negotiate a peace with Philip after Philip had conquered Olynthus and the Chalcidice in the course of what is known as the Social War; yet Demosthenes soon came to oppose that very peace treaty and the uncertain alliance it meant to establish. Here Demosthenes warns his fellow Athenians against the machinations of Philip and attempts to goad them into action against him. Whenever, men of Athens, we are discussing Philip’s intrigues and his violations of the peace, I observe that all the speeches on our side are manifestly inspired by justice and generosity, and those who denounce Philip are all felt to be saying exactly the right thing; but of the much needed action, which alone would make the speeches worth hearing, little or nothing ensues. Unfortunately all our national affairs have now reached to such a pass, that the more completely and manifestly Philip is convicted of violating the peace with us and of plotting against the whole of Greece, the more difficult it is to suggest the right course of action. The reason, Athenians, is this. Though all who aim at their own aggrandizement must be checked, not by speeches, but by practical measures, yet, in the first place, we who come before you shrink from any definite proposal or advice, being reluctant to incur your displeasure; we prefer to dilate on Philip’s shocking behavior and the like topics; and, secondly, you who sit here are indeed better equipped than Philip for making speeches about justice and for appreciating them in the mouth of another, but, when it comes to hindering the accomplishment of his present plans, you remain utterly inactive. The result is, I suppose, inevitable and perhaps reasonable. Where either side devotes its time and energy, there it succeeds the better – Philip in action, but you in argument. So if you still think it enough to employ the sounder arguments, that is easy; your task entails no trouble. But if you have to devise means whereby our present fortunes shall be repaired, and their further decline shall not take us completely by surprise, and we shall not be confronted by a mighty 3

Source: Demosthenes, vol. i, trans. J.H. Vance, Loeb Classical Library 238 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930). Loeb Classical Library ® is a registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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power which we shall be unable even to withstand, then our method of deliberation must be changed, and all who speak and all who listen must choose the best and safest policy instead of the easiest and most agreeable. In the first place, Athenians, if anyone views with confidence the present power of Philip and the extent of his dominions, if anyone imagines that all this imports no danger to our city and that you are not the object of his preparations, I must express my astonishment, and beg you all alike to listen to a brief statement of the considerations that have led me to form the opposite conclusion and to regard Philip as our enemy. Then, if you think me the better prophet, adopt my advice; if you prefer those who have so confidently trusted him, give them your allegiance. Now I, men of Athens, reason thus. What did Philip first get under his control after the Peace? Thermopylae and the Phocian government. Well, what did he make of these? He chose to act in the interests of Thebes, not of Athens. And why so? Because, I believe, guided in his calculations by ambition and the desire of universal dominion, regardless of the claims of peace and quietness and justice, he rightly saw that to our city and our national character he could offer nothing, he could do nothing, that would tempt you from selfish motives to sacrifice to him any of the other Greek states, but that you, reverencing justice, shrinking from the discredit involved in such transactions, and exercising due and proper forethought, would resist any such attempt on his part as stoutly as if you were actually at war with him. But as to the Thebans, he believed – and the event justified him – that in return for benefits received they would give him a free hand for the future and, so far from opposing or thwarting him, would even join forces with him, if he so ordered. Today, on the same assumption, he is doing the Messenians and the Argives a good turn. That, men of Athens, is the highest compliment he could pay you. For by these very acts you stand judged the one and only power in the world incapable of abandoning the common rights of the Greeks at any price, incapable of bartering your devotion to their cause for any favor or any profit. And it was natural that he should form this opinion of you and the contrary opinion of the Argives and Thebans, because he not merely looks to the present, but also draws a lesson from the past. For I suppose he learns from history and from report that your ancestors, when they might, at the price of submission to the Great King [of Persia], have become the paramount power in Greece, not only refused to entertain that proposal, conveyed to them by Alexander, an ancestor of Philip’s line, but chose to quit their homes and endure every hardship, and thereafter wrought those deeds which all men are always eager to relate, though no one has ever been able to tell them worthily; and therefore I shall not be wrong in passing them over, for they are indeed great beyond any man’s power of speech. On the other hand, he learns that the ancestors of these Thebans and Argives either fought for the barbarians or did not fight against them. He knows, then, that they both will pursue their private interests, irrespective of the common advantage of the Greeks. So he thought that if he chose you, he would be choosing friends, and that your friendship would be based on justice; but that if he attached himself to the others, he would find in them the tools of his own ambition. That is why, now as then, he chooses them rather than you. For surely it is not that he regards their fleets as superior to ours, nor that, having discovered some inland empire, he has abandoned the seaboard with its harbors, nor yet that he has a short memory for the speeches and the promises that gained for him the Peace. But it may be urged, by someone who claims to know all about it, that he acted on that occasion, not from ambition or from any of those motives with which I find fault,

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but because the claims of the Thebans were more just than ours. Now that is precisely the one argument that he cannot use now. What! The man who orders the Lacedaemonians to give up their claims to Messene, how could he pretend that he handed over Orchomenus and Coronea to Thebes because he thought it an act of justice? “But,” it will be urged (for there is this excuse left), “he was forced to yield against his better judgement, finding himself hemmed in between the Thessalian cavalry and the Theban heavy infantry.” Good! So they say he is waiting to regard the Thebans with suspicion, and some circulate a rumor that he will fortify Elatea. That is just what he is “waiting” to do, and will go on “waiting,” in my opinion. But he is not “waiting” to help the Messenians and Argives against the Lacedaemonians: he is actually dispatching mercenaries and forwarding supplies, and he is expected in person with a large force. What! The Lacedaemonians, the surviving enemies of Thebes, he is engaged in destroying; the Phocians, whom he has himself already destroyed, he is now engaged in preserving! And who is prepared to believe that? For my part I do not believe that Philip, if he acted in the first place reluctantly and under compulsion, or if he were now inclined to throw the Thebans over, would be persistently opposing their enemies. But if we may judge from his present conduct, it is plain that on that occasion also he acted from deliberate choice, and everything, if correctly observed, points to the fact that all his intrigues are directed against Athens. And today at any rate this policy is in a measure forced upon him. For observe! He wants to rule, and he has made up his mind that you, and you only, are his rivals. He has long injured you; of nothing is he more conscious than of that. For it is by holding the cities which are really yours that he retains safe possession of all the rest, and he feels that if he gave up Amphipolis and Potidaea, his own country would not be safe for him. He knows, then, these two facts – that he is intriguing against you and that you are aware of it. Assuming that you are intelligent, he thinks you are bound to hate him, and he is on the alert, expecting some blow to fall, if you can seize an opportunity and if he cannot get in his blow first. That is why he is wide awake and ready to strike, and why he is courting certain people to the detriment of our city – Thebans, I mean, and those Peloponnesians who share their views. He imagines that their cupidity will lead them to accept the present situation, while their natural dullness will prevent them from foreseeing anything that may follow. […] On your practical measures you will, if you are wise, deliberate hereafter by yourselves; at present I will suggest the immediate answer which it would be proper for you to adopt. It would indeed have been fair, men of Athens, to call upon those who conveyed to you Philip’s promises, on the strength of which you were induced to conclude the Peace. For I should never myself have consented to serve on the embassy, nor would you, I am sure, have suspended military operations, if you had imagined that Philip after securing peace would act as he has done; but his words at the time were very different from his present actions. Yes, and there are others who ought to be called upon. Whom do I mean? The men who, when peace was made and when I, returning from the second embassy – that sent to administer the oaths – found that the state was being imposed upon, and spoke out and protested and refused to give up Thermopylae and the Phocians – the men, I say, who told you that I, being a water-drinker, was naturally a disagreeable, cross-grained fellow, and that Philip, if he got through the Pass, would do just what you would pray for, would fortify Thespiae and Plataea, and humble the Theban pride, and dig a trench across the Chersonese at his own expense, and restore to you Euboea and Oropus in lieu of Amphipolis. All this was said from this very plat-

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form, as I am sure you recollect, although you are not remarkable for keeping in mind those who injure you. And the crowning disgrace is that your posterity also is bound by the same peace which these hopes prompted you to conclude; so completely were you led astray. Why do I mention this now and assert that these men ought to be called upon? I vow that I will boldly tell you the whole truth and keep nothing back. It is not that by descending to abuse I may lay myself open to retaliation in your presence, while I give those who from the first have fallen foul of me an excuse for making further profit out of Philip. Nor do I wish to indulge in idle talk. But I think that one day Philip’s policy will cause you more distress than it does now, for I see the plot thickening. I hope I may prove a false prophet, but I fear the catastrophe is even now only too near. So when you can no longer shut your eyes to what is happening, when you do not need me or someone else to tell you, but can all see for yourselves and be quite certain that all this is directed against you, then I expect you will be angry and exasperated. Yes, I am afraid that, since the ambassadors have kept silence about the services for which they know they have been bribed, those who are trying to repair some of the losses that these men have caused may chance to fall under your displeasure; for I observe that people vent their wrath as a rule, not on those who are to blame, but chiefly on those who are within their reach. Now therefore, while the danger is in the future and is gathering head, while we can still hear one another speak, I want to remind each one of you, however clearly he knows it, who it is that persuaded you to abandon the Phocians and Thermopylae, the command of which gave Philip the command also of the road to Attica and the Peloponnesus, and who it is that has forced you to take counsel, not for your rights and interests abroad, but for your possessions here at home and for the war in Attica, a war which will bring distress on every one of us, when it does come, but which really dates from that very day. For if you had not been hoodwinked then, there would be no anxiety in Athens, because Philip could never, of course, have gained command of the sea and reached Attica with his fleet, nor could he have marched past Thermopylae and Phocis, but either he would have acted fairly and observed the Peace by keeping quiet, or he would have been instantly engaged in a war similar to that which made him so anxious for the Peace. Enough has now been said by way of reminder. May all the gods forbid that my warnings should ever be brought to the sternest test! For I would not willingly see one man suffer, even though he deserve to perish, if his punishment involves the danger and the damage of all.

Epideictic Rhetoric 1. Aristotle,

art of rhetoric

1.9 (excerpts)

After this, let us speak about virtue and vice, and noble and base, since these are the concerns targeted by anyone who praises and blames [….] What is noble, then, is what is choiceworthy for its own sake, and praiseworthy accordingly, or it is that which is good, it being pleasant because it is good. So if this is the noble, virtue is necessarily noble, since virtue, being good, is praised. And virtue, as it seems, is a capacity to provide and protect good things, and a capacity to effect many great benefactions – even all benefactions pertaining to everything. And the parts

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of virtue are: justice, courage, moderation, magnificence, greatness of soul, liberality, gentleness, prudence, [and] wisdom. The greatest virtues are necessarily the ones of most use for others, if in fact virtue is a capacity for benefaction. For this reason people honor especially those who are just and courageous: the latter in war and the former also in peace are useful for others. Then there is liberality, for [the liberal] give freely and do not quarrel over money, which is what others aim at especially. Justice is a virtue through which each attains the things that are one’s own, and as the law [indicates], injustice being that through which one attains what belongs to others and not as the law indicates. Courage is that through which people are skilled in carrying out noble deeds amid dangers, and as the law commands, and as servants of the law; cowardice is the opposite. Moderation is a virtue through which people are disposed toward the bodily pleasures as the law commands; licentiousness is the opposite. Liberality is characterized by beneficence pertaining to money; stinginess is the opposite. Greatness of soul is a virtue productive of great benefactions, smallness of soul its opposite, magnificence a virtue productive of great things in expenditures. Smallness of soul and parsimony are the opposite. Prudence is a virtue of understanding, in reference to which people are able to deliberate well about the good and bad things said to bear on happiness. […] One must, for the purposes of praise and blame, take things that closely resemble given qualities as being the same as they – for example, that the cautious person is “cool and calculating” and the simpleton, “upstanding,” or that the unfeeling is “gentle”; and each is always referred to by what is the best among the qualities that follow closely together – for example, the angry and the manic are “frank,” the stubborn, “magnificent” and “august”; and [one must speak of] those characterized by the excesses as though they are characterized by the corresponding virtues – for example, the reckless man is “courageous” and the spendthrift, “liberal.” For this will be the opinion of the many, and, at the same time, fallacious reasoning derives from the cause in question: if someone is apt to run risks where it is not necessary to do so, all the more would he be held to be such where it is noble to run them, and if someone is lavish with any chance persons, he will be such also with friends. For the excess of virtue is to benefit everyone. But one must examine also those among whom the praise is given, for, just as Socrates used to say, it is not difficult to praise Athenians among Athenians. But one must speak of whatever is honored among each [people] as though it were present to hand – for example, among Scythians or Laconians or philosophers. And in general, one must lead what is honored in the direction of the noble, since it is held, at least, to be its near neighbor. And all such deeds as accord with what is fitting – for example, if they are worthy of someone’s ancestors and his own prior deeds, for acquiring additional honor is held to be a mark of happiness and noble. And if something goes beyond what is fitting but tends in the direction of what is better and what is nobler than that – for example, if someone while enjoying good fortune is measured, but is great-souled amid misfortune, or someone who, in becoming greater, becomes also better and more given to reconciliation. […] Since praise is derived from a person’s actions, and since it is especially the mark of a serious person that his action accords with his choice, one must attempt to show that he acts in accord with choice, and it is useful [to show] that he appears to have so acted many times. Hence things that have happened by accident and chance must be taken as residing in his choice, since if many similar things are adduced, they will be held to be a sign of his virtue and choice.

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2.  Thucydides, Pericles’ Funeral Oration, 4 peloponnesian war 2.35–46 (431 bc) Pericles of Athens (c. 495–429 bc) was the leading democratic statesman in Athens. He was also implacably opposed to the Spartans and prompted Athens to wage war against them in the conflict now known as the Peloponnesian War, which lasted twenty-seven years (431–404) and ended with Athens’ defeat and the near-destruction of its navy. This funeral oration occurs very early in the war and proves to be less an encomium of the men who died in battle than a praise of the greatness of democratic Athens. [35] Most of those who have spoken here before me have commended the lawgiver who added this speech to our other funeral customs. It seemed to them a noble thing that such an honor should be given at their burial of those who have fallen on the field of battle. But I should have preferred that, when the deeds have been brave, they should be honored in deed only, and with such an honor as this public funeral, which you are now witnessing. Then the reputation of many would not have been imperiled on the eloquence or want of eloquence of one, and their virtues believed or not as he spoke well or ill. For it is difficult to say neither too little nor too much; and even moderation is apt not to give the impression of truthfulness. The friend who knows the facts is likely to think that the speaker’s words fall short of his knowledge and of his wishes; another who is not so well informed, when he hears of anything which surpasses his own nature, will be envious and suspect exaggeration. The praises of others are tolerable only so long as each hearer thinks that he can do as well or nearly as well himself, but, when the speaker rises above him, jealousy is aroused and he begins to be incredulous. However, since our ancestors have approved of this practice as a noble one, I must obey, and to the utmost of my power shall endeavor to satisfy the wishes and beliefs of all who hear me. [36] I will speak first of our ancestors, for it is right and seemly that now, on such an occasion as this, a tribute should be paid to their memory. There has never been a time when they did not inhabit this land, which by their virtue they will have handed down from generation to generation, and we have received from them a free city. But if they were worthy of praise, still more were our fathers, who added to their inheritance, and after many a struggle transmitted to us their sons this great empire. And we ourselves assembled here today, who are still most of us in the vigor of life, we have carried the work of improvement further, and have richly endowed our city with all things, so that she is self-sufficient both in peace and war. Of the military exploits by which our various possessions were acquired, or of the energy with which we or our fathers drove back aggressors, Hellenic or Barbarian, I will not speak; for the account would be long and is known to you. But before I praise these here before us, I should like to point out by what principles of action we rose to power, and under what regime and through what manner of life our affairs became great. For I conceive that such thoughts are not unsuited to the occasion, and that this numerous assembly of citizens and strangers may profitably hear them. 4

Source: Benjamin Jowett, Thucydides, Translated into English (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1881). Translation revised by Robert C. Bartlett.

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[37] Our regime does not emulate the laws of our neighbors, but is rather an example to some. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while there exists equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of merit is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of virtue. Neither is poverty an obstacle, but a man may benefit his city whatever the obscurity of his condition. There is no exclusiveness in our public life, and in our private business we are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neighbor if he does what he likes; we do not put on sour looks at him which, though harmless, are not pleasant. While we are thus unconstrained in our private business, a spirit of reverence pervades our public acts; we are prevented from doing wrong by respect for the authorities and for the laws, having a particular regard to those which are ordained for the protection of the victims of injustice as well as those unwritten laws which bring general reprobation upon the transgressor of them. [38] And we have not forgotten to provide for the mind many relaxations from toil; we have regular games and sacrifices throughout the year; private dwellings are beautiful and elegant; and the delight which we daily feel in all these things helps to banish sorrow. Because of the greatness of our city the fruits of the whole earth flow in upon us; so that we enjoy the goods of other countries as freely as our own. [39] Further, our military training is in many respects superior to that of our adversaries. Our city is thrown open to the world, and we never expel a foreigner and prevent him from seeing or learning anything of which the secret, if revealed to an enemy, might profit him. We rely not so much on preparations or deceptions, as on the excellence of our souls. And in the matter of education, whereas they from early youth are always undergoing laborious exercises which are to make them brave, we live at ease, and yet are equally ready to face the perils they face. And here is the proof: the Lacedaemonians come into Athenian territory not by themselves, but with their whole confederacy following; we go alone into a neighbor’s country; and although our opponents are fighting for their homes and we on foreign soil, we have seldom any difficulty in overcoming them. Our enemies have never yet felt our united strength, the care of a navy divides our attention, and on land we are obliged to send our own citizens everywhere. But they, if they meet and defeat a part of our army, are as proud as if they had routed us all, and when defeated they pretend to have been vanquished by us all. If then we prefer to meet danger with a light heart but without laborious training, and with a courage which is gained by habit and not enforced by law, are we not greatly the better for it? Since we do not anticipate the pain, yet, when the hour comes, we can be as brave as those who never allow themselves to rest; thus our city is equally admirable in peace and in war. [40] For we love beauty with economy, and we philosophize without softness. We use wealth as an opportunity for action rather than as cause for boasting; and as for poverty, the shame lies not in admitting to it but failing by deed to flee it. Those who care for the affairs of the city can care at the same time also for their private affairs; and as for the rest, who simply go about their own business, they too know political affairs well enough. For we alone hold that someone without any share in the political is not just minding his own business but actually useless. And we ourselves judge policy correctly even if we are not the ones who actually drew it up, for we hold not that speeches are an impediment to deed, but that the harm lies in not taking counsel by way of speech before proceeding with what must be done in deed. We have a peculiar power

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of thinking before we act, and of acting, too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection. And they are surely to be esteemed the bravest spirits who, having the clearest sense both of the pains and pleasures of life, do not on that account shrink from danger. In what concerns virtue, again, we are unlike others; we make our friends by conferring, not by receiving, favors. Now he who confers a favor is the firmer friend, because he would rather by kindness keep alive the memory of an obligation; but the recipient is colder in his feelings, because he knows that in requiting another’s generosity he will not be winning gratitude but only paying a debt. We alone do good to our neighbors not upon a calculation of interest, but in the confidence of our liberal spirit. [41] To sum up: I say that Athens is the school of Hellas, and that the individual Athenian in his own person seems to have the power of adapting himself to the most varied forms of action with the utmost versatility and grace. This is no idle word for the present occasion, but truth and fact; and the assertion is verified by the position to which these qualities have raised the city. For in the hour of trial Athens alone among her contemporaries is superior to the report of her. No enemy who comes against her is indignant at the reverses which he sustains at the hands of such a city; no subject complains that his masters are unworthy of him. And we shall assuredly not be without witnesses; there are mighty monuments of our power which will make us the wonder of this and of succeeding ages; we shall not need the praises of Homer or of any other panegyrist whose poetry may please for the moment, although his representation of the facts will not bear the light of day. For we have compelled every land and every sea to open a path for our virtue, and have everywhere planted eternal memorials of deeds good and bad. Such is the city for whose sake these men nobly fought and died; they could not bear the thought that she might be taken from them; and every one of us who survive should gladly toil on her behalf. [42] I have dwelt upon the greatness of Athens because I want to show you that we are contending for a higher prize than those who enjoy none of these privileges, and to establish by manifest proof the merit of these men whom I am now commemorating. Their loftiest praise has been already spoken. For in magnifying the city I have magnified them, and men like them whose virtues made her glorious. And of how few Hellenes can it be said as of them, that their deeds when weighed in the balance have been found equal to their fame. I believe that the end such as these have attained has been the true measure of a man’s worth; it may be the first revelation of his virtues, but is at any rate their final seal. For even those who come short in other ways may justly plead the virtue with which they have fought for their city; they have blotted out the evil with the good, and have benefited the city more by their public services than they have injured her by their private actions. None of these men were enervated by wealth or hesitated to resign the pleasures of life; none of them put off the evil day in the hope, natural to poverty, that a man, though poor, may one day become rich. But, deeming the punishment of their enemies to be more desirable than any of these things, and this to be the noblest of risks, they chose to be honorably avenged, and simply to long for the other things. They resigned to hope their future prosperity, but resolved to rely upon themselves alone in the task before them. And when the moment came they were minded to resist and suffer, rather than to fly and save their lives; they ran away from the word of dishonor, but on the battlefield their feet stood fast, and in the briefest moment, as chance determined, they were released, at the peak not of their fear but of their fame.

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[43] Such was the end of these men; they were worthy of Athens, and the living need not have a more heroic spirit, although they may pray for a less perilous one. Do not examine by reason alone the benefit involved, which someone, stating all the goods there are in repelling enemies, might expand upon at length before you who know it already. But instead of listening to him I would have you day by day fix your eyes upon the greatness of Athens, until you become filled with the love of her; and when you are impressed by the spectacle of her glory, reflect that this empire has been acquired by men who knew their duty and had the daring to do it, who in the hour of conflict had the fear of dishonor always present to them, and who, if ever they failed in an enterprise, would not allow their virtues to be lost, but bestowed on her the noblest contribution. The sacrifice which they collectively made was individually repaid to them; for they received again each one for himself an ageless praise, and the noblest of all tombs – I speak not of that in which their remains are laid, but of that in which their glory survives and is proclaimed always and on every fitting occasion both in word and deed. For the whole earth is the tomb of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions at home, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men. Make them your examples, and, esteeming happiness to be freedom and freedom to be courage, do not look too closely at the perils of war. The unfortunate who has no hope of a change for the better has less reason to throw away his life than the prosperous who, if he survive, is always liable to a change for the worse, and to whom any accidental fall makes the most serious difference. To a man of spirit, the badness that accompanies growing soft is more painful than is the unfelt death that alights when he is full of strength and animated by the common hope. [44] Hence I do not now pity you the parents of these men here; I would rather comfort you. You know that they were reared amid manifold vicissitudes; and that they may be deemed fortunate who have gained what is most fitting, whether an end like theirs or a sorrow like yours, and whose share of happiness has been so ordered that the term of their happiness is likewise the term of their life. I know how hard it is to persuade you of this, when the good fortune of others will too often remind you of the gladness which once was yours. And sorrow is felt at the want of those blessings, not which a man never knew, but which were a part of his life before they were taken from him. Some of you are of an age at which you may hope to have other children, and you ought to bear your sorrow better; not only will the children who may hereafter be born make you forget your own lost ones, but the city will be doubly a gainer. She will not be left desolate, and she will be safer. For a man’s counsel cannot have equal weight or worth, when he has no children to risk in the general danger. To those of you who have passed their prime, I say: Congratulate yourselves that you have been happy during the greater part of your days; remember that your life of sorrow will not last long; and be comforted by the glory of these men. For the love of honor alone is ageless, and not riches, as some say, but honor is the delight of men when they are old and useless. [45] To you who are the children and brothers of these men, I see that the struggle to emulate them will be an arduous one. For all are wont to praise one who is no more, and, however preeminent your virtue may be, you will scarcely be judged comparable to him in point of virtue, but rather a little inferior. For the living incur envy because they are the competition, whereas he who is no impediment is honored with a good will unmarred by antagonism. And, if I am to speak of the feminine virtue to those

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of you who will henceforth be widows, let me sum this up in one short admonition: a woman’s reputation will be great if she is not inferior to the nature that is hers, as will the repute of her who is least of all talked about among the men, either in praise of her virtue or in reproach. [46] I too have paid the required tribute, in obedience to the law, making use of such fitting words as I had. The tribute of deeds to those being buried has been paid in part, and it remains only that their children should be maintained at the city’s expense until they are grown up: this is the solid prize with which, as with a garland, Athens crowns these men and those they leave behind, after a struggle like theirs. For where the rewards of virtue are greatest, there the noblest citizens will engage in politics. And now, when you have duly lamented those whom it is fitting to lament, you may depart.

3. Gorgias,

encomium of helen

(circa 414 bc) 5

Gorgias of Leontini (483–375 bc) was a leading orator and teacher of rhetoric in Greece. He is probably best known today by the portrait Plato drew of him in the dialogue that bears his name. Only four of Gorgias’ orations survive, among them his encomium of Helen that appears here. It is important to remember, when reading both Gorgias’ and Isocrates’ discussions of Helen, that “Helen of Troy” was originally from Sparta, the great enemy of Athens. She was also said to have been the most beautiful woman in the world. So powerful was her beauty, in fact, that Paris of Troy (sometimes called Alexander) wooed her away – or was she abducted? – from her lawfully wedded husband, Menelaus. Thus began the ruinous Trojan War, since the suitors of Helen had sworn an oath that all would strive to return her to her husband, should she ever be abducted. (1) What is becoming to a city is manpower, to a body beauty, to a soul wisdom, to an action virtue, to a speech truth, and the opposites of these are unbecoming. Man and woman and speech and deed and city and object should be honored with praise if praiseworthy and incur blame if unworthy, for it is an equal error and mistake to blame the praisable and to praise the blamable. (2) It is the duty of one and the same man both to speak the needful rightly and to refute [the unrightfully spoken. Thus it is right to refute] those who rebuke Helen, a woman about whom the testimony of inspired poets has become univocal and unanimous as had the ill omen of her name, which has become a reminder of misfortunes. For my part, by introducing some reasoning into my speech, I wish to free the accused of blame and, having reproved her detractors as prevaricators and proved the truth, to free her from their ignorance. (3) Now it is not unclear, not even to a few, that in nature and in blood the woman who is the subject of this speech is preeminent among preeminent men and women. For it is clear that her mother was Leda, and her father was in fact a god, Zeus, but allegedly 5

Source: trans. George A. Kennedy in The Older Sophists, ed. Rosamond Kent Sprague (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001). Reprinted by permission of Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

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a mortal, Tyndareus, of whom the former was shown to be her father because he was and the latter was disproved because he was said to be, and the one was the most powerful of men and the other the lord of all. (4) Born from such stock, she had godlike beauty, which taking and not mistaking, she kept. In many did she work much desire for her love, and her one body was the cause of bringing together many bodies of men thinking great thoughts for great goals, of whom some had greatness of wealth, some the glory of ancient nobility, some the vigor of personal agility, some command of acquired knowledge. And all came because of a passion which loved to conquer and a love of honor which was unconquered. (5) Who it was and why and how he sailed away, taking Helen as his love, I shall not say. To tell the knowing what they know shows it is right but brings no delight. Having now gone beyond the time once set for my speech, I shall go on to the beginning of my future speech, and I shall set forth the causes through which it was likely that Helen’s voyage to Troy should take place. (6) For either by will of chance and decision of the gods and vote of Necessity did she do what she did, or by force reduced or by words seduced. Now if through the first, it is right for the responsible one to be held responsible; for god’s predetermination cannot be hindered by human premeditation. For it is the nature of things, not for the strong to be hindered by the weak, but for the weaker to be ruled and drawn by the stronger, and for the stronger to lead and the weaker to follow. God is a stronger force than man in might and in wit and in other ways. If then one must place blame on chance and on a god, one must free Helen from disgrace. (7) But if she was seized by violence and illegally assaulted and unjustly insulted, it is clear that the one who seized, as the insulter, did the wronging, and the seized, as the insulted, did the suffering. It is right then for the barbarian who undertook a barbaric undertaking in word and law and deed to meet with blame in word, exclusion in law, and punishment in deed. And surely it is proper for a woman seized and robbed of her country and deprived of her friends to be pitied rather than pilloried. He did the dread deeds; she suffered them. It is just therefore to pity her but to hate him. (8) But if it was speech which persuaded her and deceived her heart, not even to this is it difficult to make an answer and to banish blame as follows. Speech is a powerful lord, which by means of the finest and most invisible body effects the divinest works: it can stop fear and banish grief and create joy and nurture pity. I shall show how this is the case, since (9) it is necessary to offer proof to the opinion of my hearers: I both deem and define all poetry as speech with meter. Fearful shuddering and tearful pity and grievous longing come upon its hearers, and at the actions and physical sufferings of others in good fortunes and in evil fortunes, through the agency of words, the soul is wont to experience a suffering of its own. But come, I shall turn from one argument to another. (10) Sacred incantations sung with words are bearers of pleasure and banishers of pain, for, merging with opinion in the soul, the power of the incantation is wont to beguile it and persuade it and alter it by witchcraft. There have been discovered two arts of witchcraft and magic: one consists of errors of soul and the other of deceptions of opinion. (11) All who have persuaded and do persuade people of things do so by molding a false argument. For if all men on all subjects had [both] memory of things past and [awareness] of things present and foreknowledge of the future, speech would not be similarly similar, since as things are now it is not easy for them to recall the past nor to consider the present nor to predict the future. So that on most subjects most men take opinion as counselor to their soul, but since opinion is slippery and insecure

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it casts those employing it into slippery and insecure successes. (12) What cause then prevents the conclusion that Helen similarly, against her will, might have come under the influence of speech, just as if ravished by the force of the mighty? For it was possible to see how the force of persuasion prevails; persuasion has the form of necessity, but it does not have the same power. For speech constrained the soul, persuading it which it persuaded, both to believe the things said and to approve the things done. The persuader, like a constrainer, does the wrong and the persuaded, like the constrained, in speech is wrongly charged. (13) To understand that persuasion, when added to speech, is wont also to impress the soul as it wishes, one must study: first, the words of astronomers who, substituting opinion for opinion, taking away one but creating another, make what is incredible and unclear seem true to the eyes of opinion; then, second, logically necessary debates in which a single speech, written with art but not spoken with truth, bends a great crowd and persuades; and third, the verbal disputes of philosophers in which the swiftness of thought is also shown making the belief in an opinion subject to easy change. (14) The effect of speech upon the condition of the soul is comparable to the power of drugs over the nature of bodies. For just as different drugs dispel different secretions from the body, and some bring an end to disease and others to life, so also in the case of speeches, some distress, others delight, some cause fear, others make the hearers bold, and some drug and bewitch the soul with a kind of evil persuasion. (15) It has been explained that if she was persuaded by speech she did not do wrong but was unfortunate. I shall discuss the fourth cause in a fourth passage. For if it was love which did all these things, there will be no difficulty in escaping the charge of the sin which is alleged to have taken place. For the things we see do not have the nature which we wish them to have, but the nature which each actually has. Through sight the soul receives an impression even in its inner features. (16) When belligerents in war buckle on their warlike accouterments of bronze and steel, some designed for defense, others for offense, if the sight sees this, immediately it is alarmed and it alarms the soul, so that often men flee, panic-stricken, from future danger [as though it were] present. For strong as is the habit of obedience to law, it is ejected by fear resulting from sight, which coming to a man causes him to be indifferent both to what is judged honorable because of the law and to the advantage to be derived from victory. (17) It has happened that people, after having seen frightening sights, have also lost presence of mind for the present moment; in this way fear extinguishes and excludes thought. And many have fallen victim to useless labor and dread diseases and hardly curable madnesses. In this way the sight engraves upon the mind images of things which have been seen. And many frightening impressions linger, and what lingers is exactly analogous to what is spoken. (18) Moreover, whenever pictures perfectly create a single figure and form from many colors and figures, they delight the sight, while the creation of statues and the production of works of art furnish a pleasant sight to the eyes. Thus it is natural for the sight to grieve for some things and to long for others, and much love and desire for many objects and figures is engraved in many men. (19) If, therefore, the eye of Helen, pleased by the figure of Alexander, presented to her soul eager desire and contest of love, what wonder? If, [being] a god, [love has] the divine power of the gods, how could a lesser being reject and refuse it? But if it is a disease of human origin and a fault of the soul, it should not be blamed as a sin, but regarded as an affliction. For she came, as she did come, caught in the net of Fate, not by the plans of the mind, and by the constraints of love, not by the devices of art.

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(20) How then can one regard blame of Helen as just, since she is utterly acquitted of all charge, whether she did what she did through falling in love or persuaded by speech or ravished by force or constrained by divine constraint? (21) I have by means of speech removed disgrace from a woman; I have observed the procedure which I set up at the beginning of the speech; I have tried to end the injustice of blame and the ignorance of opinion; I wished to write a speech which would be a praise of Helen and a diversion to myself.

4. Isocrates,

helen

(circa 370 bc) 6

Isocrates of Athens (436–338 bc) is among the greatest of the ancient orators and teachers of rhetoric, a good many of whose orations and writings survive. Here he takes up, not a contemporary legal brief or political crisis, but – like Gorgias before him – the reputation of the legendary Helen of Troy. 1. There are some who take great pride in being able to discuss in a tolerable manner any out of the way or paradoxical subject they may propose to themselves; and men have grown old, some asserting that it is impossible to say what is false, to contradict, or even to give two opposite accounts of the same things, others declaring that courage, wisdom, and justice are identical, and that none of them are natural qualities, but that one kind of knowledge alone is concerned with them all; while others waste their time in discussions that are perfectly useless, and whose only effect is to cause annoyance to their followers. 2. Now, if I saw that these subtleties had been recently introduced into the study of eloquence, and that these men could pride themselves upon the novelty of the invention, I should not wonder at them so much; but as it is, who is so backward in knowledge as not to know that Protagoras and the sophists of his time have left to us writings of a similar nature and far more vexatious than these? 3. For how could one go beyond Gorgias, who ventured to assert that nothing of all that is exists, or Zeno, who attempted to prove that the same things were both possible and impossible, or Melissus, who, although things were infinite in number, endeavored to find proofs that the whole is one and the same? 4. But, nevertheless, while they made it abundantly clear that it is possible to make up a false account of any subject one may propose, they still waste time on this topic, whereas they ought to have abandoned such claptrap, which pretends to convince in words but has been long proved false in deeds, and to pursue the search after truth, to bring up their disciples to a knowledge of practical politics, 5. and to train them to experience in such matters, bearing in mind that it is far better to have a sound opinion upon useful things than an accurate knowledge of things that are useless, and to have a slight superiority in matters of importance than to be far above others in small things that are of no practical benefit in life. 6. But they have no thought for anything save enriching themselves at the expense of younger men. Now, it is just the philosophy that busies itself with discussions that is able to produce this result; for those who have no thought either for public or private interests take especial pleasure in such discourses as are of no service for any single 6

Source: Isocrates, Orations, vol. i, trans. J.H. Freese (London: George Bell & Sons, 1894).

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purpose. 7. In the case of the young men, there is much to be said in excuse of their entertaining such ideas; for in everything they are always disposed to exaggeration and straining after the marvelous; but those who pretend to instruct them deserve rebuke, because, while they accuse those who cheat in private contracts and make an unfair use of their powers of speech, they themselves act in a far more reprehensible manner than this; for while the former merely inflict loss upon strangers, the latter chiefly do harm to their own pupils. 8. They have further caused the practice of false speaking to increase to such an extent that some, seeing these men benefited thereby, even venture to declare in writing, that the life of mendicants and exiles is more enviable than that of anyone else, and from the faculty which they possess of being able to say something about worthless subjects, they endeavor to prove that they will have plenty to say about such as are noble and useful. 9. But it seems to me to be the most ridiculous thing of all to attempt to convince people by such words that they possess knowledge of political affairs, while in the course of these very professions they might display it; for it is in such matters that those who dispute the possession of wisdom with others and pretend to be wise men ought to excel and be superior to the uninitiated, not in things that nobody pays any attention to, but in things which are the object of general rivalry. 10. But, as it is, their behavior resembles that of a man who, while claiming to be the strongest of all athletes, descends into an arena in which no one would condescend to meet him. For what sensible man would undertake to praise misfortunes? It is evident that it is only from weakness that these men take refuge in such absurdities. 11. There is only one road to this class of compositions, which is neither difficult to find, nor to learn, nor to imitate; but discourses that are of general applicability, and trustworthy, and of a similar nature, can only be composed and uttered by the aid of a variety of forms and suitable expressions that are hard to learn, and their composition is so much more difficult in proportion as gravity is more laborious than buffoonery and earnestness than frivolity. 12. A strong argument is this: none of those who have desired to praise bumble bees, salt, and the like, have ever yet been without something to say, while all those who attempt to speak of such things as are admitted to be good and honorable, or of men who are distinguished for virtue, have fallen far short of the truth in what they say. 13. For it does not require the same intellect to speak suitably on these two kinds of subjects, but, while it is easy to say more than is necessary on trifling matters, it is difficult to rise to the importance of such things as deserve it; and while, in speaking of things of repute, it is rare to find anything that someone has not mentioned before, all a man’s utterances concerning what is humble and worthless are original. 14. This is the reason why I praise him who wrote of Helen more than all others who have desired to describe a subject eloquently, because he has recalled the memory of a woman who surpassed all others in birth, beauty, and renown. However, even he has unwittingly made a slight error; for, while asserting that he has written an encomium upon her, he has rather composed a defense of her acts. 15. My discourse, however, is neither of the same kind nor concerned with the same subject, or rather, it is just the opposite; for it is fitting to defend those who are accused of injustice, but to praise those who excel in any noble quality. However, that I may not render myself liable to the reproach of doing what is most easy to do, to criticize others without producing anything of my own, I will endeavor to speak of this same woman, omitting all that has been previously said by others.

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16. I will commence my discourse with the origin of her family. While most of the demigods owed their existence to Zeus, she was the only woman of whom he condescended to be called the father. While he took most interest in the son of Alcmene [i.e., Heracles] and the children of Leda, he so far showed preference for Helen over Heracles, that, having granted such strength to the latter that he was enabled to overcome all by force, he allotted to Helen the gift of beauty, which is destined to bring even strength into subjection to it. 17. Knowing, further, that distinction and renown arise, not from peace, but from wars and combats, and wishing not only to exalt their bodies to heaven, but to bestow upon them an everlasting remembrance, he ordained a life of toil and danger for the one, while he granted to the other beauty that was universally admired and became the object of universal contention. 18. In the first place, Theseus, the reputed son of Aegeus, but who was really the offspring of Poseidon, beholding her while she was still of tender years, but even then surpassed all other women in beauty, was so subjugated by her charms, that he, the man who was accustomed to command all others, although his country was most glorious, and his kingdom most securely established, did not consider life worth living in the enjoyment of the blessings he possessed without her society; 19. and, when he was unable to obtain her from her lawful guardians, who were waiting until she was of age to be married and also for the response of the Pythian oracle, disregarding the power of Tyndareus, and despising the might of Castor and Polydeuces, in utter contempt of all the dangers that menaced him from Sparta, he carried her off by force to Aphidna in Attica, 20. and felt so grateful to Peirithous, who helped him to abduct her, that, when he aspired to the hand of Kore, the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, and begged him to accompany him down to Hades, Theseus, finding that he could not divert him from his purpose by his advice, although the danger was obvious, nevertheless accompanied him, thinking that he owed him this debt of gratitude, and that he ought not to shrink from the mandates of Peirithous, in return for the part he had taken in his own dangerous enterprise. 21. If he who acted thus had been an ordinary man instead of one of the most distinguished, it would not yet be clear whether my discourse is an encomium of Helen or an accusation of Theseus; but we shall find that, whereas in the case of all other famous men, one has been lacking in courage, another in wisdom, and another in some similar quality, he alone was deficient in none, but was endowed with perfect virtue. 22. And it seems to me that I ought to speak of him even at greater length; for I think that the surest way of inspiring confidence in those who are desirous of praising Helen, is to show that those who loved and admired her were themselves more worthy of admiration than the rest of mankind. For, in regard to what has happened in our own days, we should naturally judge in accordance with our own opinions, but in regard to what took place so long ago it behooves us to show ourselves in agreement with the wise men of that age. 23. The most glorious thing that I can say concerning Theseus is that, although he lived in the time of Heracles, he established a reputation which rivaled his. Not only were they equipped with the same arms, but they followed the same pursuits, in a manner befitting their relationship; for, being the children of brothers, the one of Zeus, the other of Poseidon, they cherished kindred desires, being the only men of antiquity who set themselves up as defenders of the life of their fellows. 24. It came to pass that the one underwent dangers that were greater and more famous, the other such as were more useful and more closely connected with the Hellenes. Heracles was ordered by Eurys-

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theus to fetch the cows from Erytheia and the apples of the Hesperides, and to bring up Cerberus from below, and to perform other similar labors, from which no benefit was likely to accrue to others, but only danger to himself; 25. while Theseus, being his own master, chose such undertakings as were likely to approve him the benefactor of Hellas or of his own country. Unaided, he vanquished the bull let loose by Poseidon, which ravaged Attica, which all united did not dare to face, and thereby delivered the inhabitants of the city from great fear and anxiety; 26. after this, entering into alliance with the Lapithae, he marched against the Centaurs, creatures half-men half-horses, who, endowed with swiftness, strength, and daring beyond all, sacked some of the cities, prepared to attack others, and menaced others with destruction; and, having defeated them, he at once checked their insolence, and not long afterwards wiped their race off the face of the earth. 27. About the same time the monster born in Crete, the offspring of Pasiphae, daughter of the Sun, was receiving the tribute of twice seven children sent by the city in obedience to the oracle. Theseus, when he saw them led away, accompanied by the whole of the people, to a monstrous and inevitable death, and lamented while yet alive, was so indignant that he thought it better to die than to live as the ruler of a city that was forced to pay such a pitiable tribute to its enemies. 28. Embarking with them for Crete, he overcame the creature, by nature half-man and half-bull, possessed of two-fold strength as befitted its double origin, saved and restored the children to their parents, and freed the city from a mandate so unjust, so monstrous, and so hard to be delivered from. 29. I do not know how to deal with the rest of my discourse; for, as I have directed my attention to the deeds of Theseus and have commenced to speak about them, I do not like to stop half-way, and to say nothing about the lawless conduct of Sciron, Kerkyon, and other brigands like them, against whom he fought and delivered the Hellenes from many dire calamities, but, on the other hand, I feel that I am travelling beyond the proper limits of my subject, and am afraid that some may think that I am more interested in him than in the original subject of my discourse. 30. In this difficulty, I think it best to omit the greater part of the exploits of Theseus out of consideration for fretful listeners, and to describe the rest as briefly as possible, that I may gratify both them and myself, and not allow myself to be altogether subservient to those whose habit it is to be jealous of and to carp at everything that they hear. 31. His courage he displayed in those deeds in which he exposed himself to danger alone and unaided; his military skill in the engagements he fought together with the whole city; his piety towards the gods in the reception he gave to the suppliants Adrastus and the children of Heracles, the latter of whom he saved by defeating the Peloponnesians, while to the former, in spite of the Thebans, he restored for burial those who had died under the walls of the Cadmea; and his other virtues and his prudence, not only in what has been mentioned before, but above all in his administration of the city. 32. He saw that those who aspire to rule their fellow-citizens by force are themselves the slaves of others, and that those who make life dangerous for the rest live in fear and trembling themselves, and are forced to make war, on the one hand, with the help of the citizens against those who attack their country, 33. and, on the other hand, with the help of mercenaries against their fellow-citizens; he further saw them plundering the temples of the gods, putting to death the best citizens, distrusting their closest friends, and living in no less anxiety than those who are lying in prison under sentence of death;

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he saw that, although they are objects of envy abroad, they are a prey at home to greater anxiety than ordinary men; 34. for what can be more bitter for a man than to live in the perpetual dread of being assassinated by one of those around him, as much afraid of his protectors as of those who are plotting against him? Theseus then, despising all such men, and considering them, not rulers, but plagues of their country, proved that it was easy to be a monarch and yet to be no less happy than those who enjoy equal rights with the rest of the citizens. 35. In the first place, he united the scattered villages which formed the city, and increased it to such an extent that, after all that time, it is even now the greatest of all the Hellenic cities; next, he established a common fatherland, and, having emancipated the minds of his fellow-citizens, he opened the path of rivalry in virtue to all, being confident that he would be no less superior to them if they practiced it than if they neglected it, and feeling that the honors which are bestowed by those who are high-minded are sweeter than those derived from men who are in a state of servitude. 36.  Far from doing anything against the wishes of the citizens, he gave the people control over public affairs, while they asked him to rule alone, considering that in his hands his monarchy was more faithful to the laws and more impartial than their own democracy. For he did not, like other monarchs, impose labors upon others, while reserving the enjoyment of pleasures for himself alone, but he made the dangers his own, and shared the advantages impartially with all. 37. In consequence whereof, he passed his life, not an object of attack, but of affection, not preserving his authority by the aid of mercenaries, but protected by the love of the citizens, in authority an autocrat, in good deeds a popular leader; for he administered the state so honorably and in such strict accordance with the laws that even now traces of his mildness may be found remaining in our national character. 38. As for Helen, the daughter of Zeus, who brought under her control such high virtue and wisdom, who could help praising and honoring her, and considering her far superior to all the women who have ever yet existed? For we shall never be able to produce a more trustworthy witness or a more convincing authority upon the good qualities of Helen than the judgment of Theseus. But, that I may not seem to dwell too long upon the same topic from lack of ideas, or to misuse the reputation of a single man in order to enhance that of Helen, I wish to speak of what remains. 39. After the descent of Theseus to Hades, when she returned again to Lacedaemon and was of age to marry, all the princes and rulers of the time held the same opinion concerning her as Theseus; for, although it was in their power to choose out of their own cities the most distinguished women as their wives, they despised an alliance at home, and went to Sparta as suitors of Helen. 40. And, when her future husband was as yet undecided, and all had an equal chance, it was so evident that she would become the cause of general strife, that they assembled together and pledged themselves to assist one another, in case anyone should attempt to take her from him who might be thought worthy of her hand in marriage, each one imagining that he was thereby ensuring support for himself in the future. 41. While, however, they were all deceived in their particular hope except one man, none of them was wrong in the general opinion entertained concerning her. For, shortly afterwards, a dispute arose amongst the gods about beauty, in which Alexander, son of Priam, was appointed umpire, and, when Hera offered him the kingdom of all Asia, Athena victory in war, 42. and Aphrodite the hand of Helen, being unable to decide between their personal charms, but dazzled by the sight of the goddesses,

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and compelled to make his choice of the gifts they offered, he chose the possession of Helen as preferable to everything else, not with an eye to mere pleasure – although this is more to be desired by men of sense than many other things; 43. such, however, was not his object, but he was eager to become the son-in-law of Zeus, thinking this a far greater and more honorable distinction than the empire of Asia, and reflecting that, while great authority and power is at times bestowed even upon contemptible individuals, none among posterity would ever be considered worthy of the hand of such a woman, and that further he could bequeath no more splendid legacy to his children than by securing to them the honor of being descended from Zeus on the mother’s as well as on the father’s side. 44. For he knew that, while other favors of fortune quickly change hands, nobility of birth is an eternal patrimony, so that this choice of his would be to the advantage of his whole family, while all the other gifts would not endure beyond the term of his own life. 45. No sensible man could find anything to say against these considerations; some of those, however, who pay no heed to previous circumstances, but only look at the events of the moment, have before now reviled him, whose folly may easily be understood from the reproaches they have uttered against him. 46. For how can they avoid incurring ridicule, if they consider their own intellect more capable than that which was honored by the preference of the gods, who certainly did not entrust the decision of a matter which stirred up such strife amongst them to an ordinary individual, but were clearly as anxious to select the best judge as they were careful about the subject of the dispute itself. 47. And we ought to consider what manner of man he was, and to estimate him, not by the wrath of those who failed to obtain the prize, but by the fact that all, after deliberation, had chosen his judgment in preference to that of anyone else. For there is nothing to prevent even those who have done no wrong being maltreated by those who are stronger, but it is impossible for a man, except he be far superior in intelligence, to be so honored as to be appointed judge of immortals, although only a mortal himself. 48. I am surprised that anyone should think that he decided wrongly in preferring to live with her, for whose sake many of the demigods were ready to die; would he not have shown himself utterly senseless if, knowing that the goddesses were rivals for the palm of beauty, he had himself despised it, and had not considered this the most precious gift, to which he saw that the goddesses themselves attached the greatest value? 49. Who would have despised the hand of Helen, at whose abduction the Hellenes were as indignant as if the whole of their country had been plundered, while the barbarians were as proud as if they had conquered us all? The feeling with which they both regarded it is clear; for, though they formerly had many causes of complaint against one another, they sunk their differences, and, for her sake, stirred up a war of such magnitude, not only in the furious passions it aroused, but also in its duration and extensive preparations, as had never taken place before that time. 50. And when it was in the power of the one party, if they restored Helen, to be rid of their present misfortunes, and of the other, if they took no thought for her, to live in security for the future, neither of them were willing to act in this manner, but the barbarians were content to see their cities sacked and their country ravaged, if only they need not surrender her to the Hellenes, while the latter preferred to remain and grow old in a foreign land without ever looking upon their friends again rather than to abandon her and to withdraw to their own homes. 51. And they acted in this manner, not eager

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for the victory of Alexander or Menelaus, but the one on behalf of Asia, the others in the cause of Europe, thinking that whichever of the two countries should be her home would be the happier. 52. Such a love of the hardships of that expedition came upon all, not only Hellenes and barbarians, but also upon the gods, that they did not even dissuade their own children from taking part in the struggles around Troy: but Zeus, Eos, Poseidon, and Thetis, although they knew beforehand the fate of Sarpedon, of Memnon, of Cycnus, and of Achilles, joined in encouraging and sending them forth to the war, 53. feeling that it was more honorable for them to die fighting for the daughter of Zeus than to live without taking part in the dangers to be undergone on her behalf. And we ought not to be surprised at their feelings in regard to their children, since the war they waged was far greater and more terrible than that which they had formerly carried on against the Giants; against the latter they carried on the conflict united, but for Helen they fought against one another. 54. With good reason they came to this resolution, and I also have a right to use exaggerated language about her; for she had the greatest share of beauty, which is the most august, most precious, and most divine of all things. And it is easy to estimate its influence; for, while many of the things which have no part or lot in courage, wisdom, or justice, will be seen to be valued more highly than each of these, we shall find that none of those things which have no share of beauty are objects of admiration, but are universally despised, except in so far as they share this attribute, and that virtue owes its reputation chiefly to this, that it is the most beautiful of the aspects of life. 55. And we may learn the superiority of beauty over all other things from the feelings with which we ourselves regard each of them. For, in regard to other things, we merely desire to obtain what we stand in need of, but our minds are affected no further by them; but a love of beautiful things is implanted in us, as much more powerful than our will, as the object of it is better. 56. And, while we are jealous of those who surpass us in intelligence or anything else, if they do not win us over by daily benefits and force us to love them, we are inspired with goodwill towards the beautiful at first sight, and they are the only persons to whom we are never weary of paying homage as to the gods, 57. but we are more willing to serve such than to rule others, being more grateful to those who impose many tasks upon us than to those who set us nothing to do. And, while we reproach those who are subject to any other power, and contemptuously call them flatterers, we regard those who are the slaves of beauty as lovers of the beautiful and of honorable labor. 58. Further, we show such pious respect and consideration for this gift of nature, that we hold those of its possessors who make a profit of it and counsel ill in regard to their youth in greater dishonor than those who violate the persons of others; while we honor in the future those who keep the flower of their own youth inaccessible to the vicious like a sacred shrine equally with those who have conferred some benefit on the city at large. 59. But why need I waste time in recording the opinions of men? Zeus, the lord of all, who displays his might in everything else, considers it right to approach beauty in a spirit of humility. For in the likeness of Amphitryon he visited Alcmene, and as a golden stream was intimate with Danae, and, in the form of a swan, took refuge in the bosom of Nemesis, and, in the same shape, won Leda for his bride, ever pursuing his quest of this gift of nature by stratagem and not by force. 60. And beauty is held in so much greater honor amongst them than amongst us, that they readily make excuses for their

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wives when overcome by its influence, and one could point to many of the goddesses, who have fallen victims to mortal beauty, none of whom sought to conceal what had happened as if it involved any disgrace but, as if such acts were honorable, they preferred that they should be celebrated rather than remain untold. The strongest proof of what I have stated is that we shall find that more mortals have owed their immortality to their beauty than to any other excellences. 61. To all these Helen was superior in proportion as she surpassed them in personal charm. For she not only won immortality herself, but, having obtained power equal to that of the gods, she first translated her brothers to the gods, when they were already in the grasp of destiny, and, desiring to make the change assured, she bestowed upon them honors so conspicuous that the sight of them is able to save the lives of those in peril on the sea, if they invoke their aid with pious respect. 62. After this she so amply rewarded Menelaus for the toils and dangers which he underwent on her behalf, that, when the whole race of the Pelopidae became extinct, and was involved in irremediable woes, she not only delivered him from these calamities but, having bestowed immortality upon him, she took him for her spouse and companion for all time. 63. And as an actual witness to this I can bring forward the city of the Spartans, which preserves ancient traditions with the greatest fidelity; for even at the present day, at Therapnae in Laconia, they offer up holy sacrifices according to the custom of their ancestors in honor of both of them, as unto gods, and not as unto heroes. 64. She further displayed her power to Stesichorus the poet; for, having used insulting language concerning her at the commencement of an ode, he rose up bereft of eyesight; but when, recognizing the cause of his affliction, he composed his recantation, as it is called, she restored to him the faculty of sight. 65. Some of the Homeridae also recount that, coming to Homer by night, she ordered him to compose an epic on those who took the field at Troy, wishing to render their death an object of greater envy than the life of the rest of mankind; and that thus, partly owing to the genius of Homer, but chiefly through her, his charming poem, of universal renown, was composed. 66. Since then she has power both to punish and reward, it is the duty of the wealthy to propitiate and honor her with offerings, sacrifices, and processions, and of philosophers to endeavor to speak of her in terms worthy of the material at hand; for such is the tribute that it befits the educated to pay. 67. What I have omitted far exceeds what I have said. For, not to mention arts, philosophy, and all the other blessings which one might refer to her and to the Trojan war, we should rightly consider that it is owing to her that we are not the slaves of the barbarians. For we shall find that the Hellenes became of one mind for the sake of Helen, and united in an expedition against them, and that on that occasion for the first time Europe erected a trophy in honor of a victory over Asia; 68. in consequence of which our fortunes experienced such a change, that from that time forth those of the barbarians who were unfortunate begged that they might govern Hellenic cities. Danaus, having fled from Egypt, occupied Argos, Cadmus of Sidon became ruler of Thebes, the Carians peopled the islands, and Pelops, the son of Tantalus, became master of the whole of Peloponnesus; and, after that war, our race made such strides that it took from the barbarians important cities and a large extent of territory. 69. If, therefore, anyone is desirous of developing and enlarging upon this subject, he will have an ample opportunity of praising Helen more than I have done in this discourse, and of finding much to say concerning her that is as yet unsaid.

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5.  Gouverneur Morris, “Alexander Hamilton” (July 14, 1804) 7 Gouverneur Morris (1752–1816) was a signatory to the Declaration of Independence and later wrote the Preamble to the US Constitution. He delivered this address at the funeral of Alexander Hamilton in Trinity Church, New York City. Fellow Citizens, If on this sad, this solemn occasion, I should endeavour to move your commiseration, it would be doing injustice to that sensibility which has been so generally and so justly manifested. Far from attempting to excite your emotions, I must try to repress my own, and yet I fear that instead of the language of a speaker, you will hear only the lamentations of a bewailing friend. But I will struggle with my bursting heart, to pourtray that Heroic Spirit, which has flown to the mansions of bliss. Students of Columbia – he was in the ardent pursuit of knowledge in your academic shades, when the first sound of the American war called him to the field. A young and unprotected volunteer, such was his zeal, and so brilliant his service, that we heard his name before we knew his person. It seemed as if God had called him suddenly into existence, that he might assist to save a world! The penetrating eye of Washington soon perceived the manly spirit which animated his youthful bosom. By that excellent judge of men he was selected as an Aid, and thus he became early acquainted with, and was a principle actor in the most important scenes of our Revolution. At the siege of York, he pertinaciously insisted – and he obtained the command of a Forlorn Hope. He stormed the redoubt; but let it be recorded, that not one single man of the enemy perished. His gallant troops emulating the heroism of their chief, checked the uplifted arm, and spared a foe no longer resisting. Here closed his military career. Shortly after the war, your favour – no, your discernment called him to public office. You sent him to the convention at Philadelphia: he there assisted in forming that constitution which is now the bond of our union, the shield of our defence and the source of our prosperity. In signing that compact he exprest his apprehension that it did not contain sufficient means of strength for its own preservation; and that in consequence we should share the fate of many other republics and pass through Anarchy to Despotism. We hoped better things. We confided in the good sense of the American people: and above all we trusted in the protecting Providence of the Almighty. On this important subject he never concealed his opinion. He disdained concealment. Knowing the purity of his heart, he bore it as it were in his hand, exposing to every passenger its inmost recesses. This generous indiscretion subjected him to censure from misrepresentation. His speculative opinions were treated as deliberate designs; and yet you all know how strenuous, how unremitting were his efforts to establish and to preserve the constitution. If, then, his opinion was wrong, pardon, oh! pardon that single error, in a life devoted to your service. 7

Source: Founders Online: Correspondence and Other Writings of Seven Major Shapers of the United States, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-26-020001-0271.

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At the time when our government was organised, we were without funds, though not without resources. To call them into action, and establish order in the finances, Washington sought for splendid talents, for extensive information, and, above all, he sought for sterling, incorruptible integrity – All these he found in Hamilton. The system then adopted has been the subject of much animadversion. If it be not without a fault, let it be remembered that nothing human is perfect. Recollect the circumstances of the moment – recollect the conflict of opinion – and above all, remember that the minister of a republic must bend to the will of the people. The administration which Washington formed, was one of the most efficient, one of the best that any country was ever blest with. And the result was a rapid advance in power and prosperity, of which there is no example in any other age or nation. The part which Hamilton bore is universally known. His unsuspecting confidence in professions which he believed to be sincere, led him to trust too much to the undeserving. This exposed him to misrepresentation. He felt himself obliged to resign. The care of a rising family, and the narrowness of his fortune, made it a duty to return to his profession for their support. But though he was compelled to abandon public life, never, no, never for a moment did he abandon the public service. He never lost sight of your interests. I declare to you, before that God in whose presence we are now so especially assembled, that in his most private and confidential conversations, the single objects of discussion and consideration were your freedom and happiness. You well remember the state of things which again called forth Washington from his retreat to lead your armies. You know that he asked for Hamilton to be his Second in command. That venerable sage well knew the dangerous incidents of a military profession, and he felt the hand of time pinching life at its source. It was probable that he would soon be removed from the scene, and that his Second would succeed to the command. He knew, by experience, the importance of that place – and he thought the sword of America might safely be confided to the hand which now lies cold in that coffin. Oh! my fellow citizens, remember this solemn testimonial, that he was not ambitious. Yet, he was charged with ambition: and wounded by the imputation, when he laid down his command, he declared in the proud independence of his soul, that he never would accept of any office, unless in a foreign war he should be called on to expose his life in defense of his country This determination was immoveable. It was his fault that his opinions and his resolutions could not be changed. Knowing his own firm purpose, he was indignant at the charge that he sought for place or power. He was ambitious only of glory, but he was deeply solicitous for you. For himself he feared nothing, but he feared that bad men might by false professions, acquire your confidence and abuse it to your ruin. Brethren of the Cincinnati – There lies our chief! Let him still be our model. Like him, after a long and faithful public service, let us cheerfully perform the social duties of private life. Oh! he was mild and gentle. In him there was no offence; no guile. His generous hand and heart were open to all. Gentlemen of the Bar – You have lost your brightest ornament. Cherish and imitate his example. While, like him, with justifiable, with laudable zeal, you pursue the interests of your clients, remember, like him, the eternal principles of justice. Fellow Citizens – You have long witnessed his professional conduct, and felt his unrivalled eloquence. You know how well he performed the duties of a Citizen – you know that he never courted your favor by adulation, or the sacrifice of his own judg-

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ment. You have seen him contending against you, and saving your dearest interests, as it were, in spite of yourselves. And you now feel and enjoy the benefits resulting from the firm energy of his conduct. Bear this testimony to the memory of my departed friend. I charge you to protect his fame – It is all he has left – all that these poor orphan children will inherit from their father. But, my countrymen, that Fame may be a rich treasure to you also. Let it be the test by which to examine those who solicit your favor. Disregarding professions, view their conduct and on a doubtful occasion, ask, Would Hamilton have done this thing? You all know how he perished. On this last scene, I cannot, I must not dwell. It might excite emotions too strong for your better judgment. Suffer not your indignation to lead to any act which might again offend the insulted majesty of the law. On his part, as from his lips, though with my voice – for his voice you will hear no more – let me entreat you to respect yourself. And now, ye ministers of the everlasting God, perform your holy office and commit these ashes of our departed brother to the bosom of the Grave!

6.  Daniel Webster, “On the Deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson” (excerpts) (August 2, 1826) 8 Daniel Webster (1782–1852) was a prominent American lawyer who represented New Hampshire and Massachusetts in the US Congress and served as the Secretary of State in several administrations. He is probably best known for his role as the leading attorney in several landmark Supreme Court cases, including McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) and Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819). He delivered this eulogy in Faneuil Hall in Boston. This is an unaccustomed spectacle. For the first time, fellow-citizens, badges of mourning shroud the columns and overhang the arches of this hall. These walls, which were consecrated, so long ago, to the cause of American liberty, which witnessed her infant struggles and rung with the shouts of her earliest victories, proclaim, now, that distinguished friends and champions of that great cause have fallen. It is right that it should be thus. The tears which flow, and the honors that are paid, when the founders of the republic die, give hope that the republic itself may be immortal. It is fit that, by public assembly and solemn observance, by anthem and by eulogy, we commemorate the services of national benefactors, extol their virtues, and render thanks to God for eminent blessings, early given and long continued, through their agency, to our favored country. ADAMS and JEFFERSON are no more; and we are assembled, fellow-citizens, the  aged, the middle-aged, and the young, by the spontaneous impulse of all, under the authority of the municipal government, with the presence of the chief magistrate of the Commonwealth, and others its official representatives, the University, and the learned societies, to bear our part in these manifestations of respect and gratitude which pervade the whole land. ADAMS and JEFFERSON are no more. On our fiftieth anni 8

Source: Daniel Webster for Young Americans, ed. Charles F. Richardson (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1906).

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versary, the great day of national jubilee, in the very hour of public rejoicing, in the midst of echoing and reechoing voices of thanksgiving, while their own names were on all tongues, they took their flight together to the world of spirits. If it be true that no one can safely be pronounced happy while he lives, if that event which terminates life can alone crown its honors and its glory, what felicity is here! The great epic of their lives, how happily concluded! Poetry itself has hardly terminated illustrious lives, and finished the career of earthly renown, by such a consummation. If we had the power, we could not wish to reverse this dispensation of the Divine Providence. The great objects of life were accomplished, the drama was ready to be closed. It has closed; our patriots have fallen; but so fallen, at such age, with such coincidence, on such a day, that we cannot rationally lament that the end has come, which we knew could not be long deferred. Neither of these great men, fellow-citizens, could have died, at any time, without leaving an immense void in our American society. They have been so intimately, and for so long a time, blended with the history of the country, and especially so united, in our thoughts and recollections, with the events of the Revolution, that the death of either of them would have touched the chords of public sympathy. We should have felt that one great link, connecting us with former times, was broken; that we had lost something more, as it were, of the presence of the Revolution itself, and of the act of independence, and were driven on, by another great remove from the days of our country’s early distinction, to meet posterity and to mix with the future. Like the mariner, whom the currents of the ocean and the winds carry along until he sees the stars which have directed his course and lighted his pathless way descend one by one, beneath the rising horizon, we should have felt that the stream of time had borne us onward till another great luminary, whose light had cheered us and whose guidance we had followed, had sunk away from our sight. But the concurrence of their death on the anniversary of Independence has naturally awakened stronger emotions. Both had been President, both had lived to great age, both were early patriots, and both were distinguished and ever honored by their immediate agency in the act of independence. It cannot but seem striking and extraordinary, that these two should live to see the fiftieth year from the date of that act; that they should complete that year; and that then, on the day which had fast linked forever their own fame with their country’s glory, the heavens should open to receive them both at once. As their lives themselves were the gifts of Providence, who is not willing to recognize in their happy termination, as well as in their long continuance, proofs that our country and its benefactors are objects of His care? ADAMS and JEFFERSON, I have said, are no more. As human beings, indeed, they are no more. They are no more, as in 1776, bold and fearless advocates of independence; no more, as at subsequent periods, the head of the government; no more, as we have recently seen them, aged and venerable objects of admiration and regard. They are no more. They are dead. But how little is there of the great and good which can die! To their country they yet live, and live forever. They live in all that perpetuates the remembrance of men on earth; in the recorded proofs of their own great actions, in the offspring of their intellect, in the deep-engraved lines of public gratitude, and in the respect and homage of mankind. They live in their example; and they live, emphatically, and will live, in the influence which their lives and efforts, their principles and opinions, now exercise, and will continue to exercise, on the affairs of men, not only in their own country but throughout the civilized world. A superior and commanding

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human intellect, a truly great man, when Heaven vouchsafes so rare a gift, is not a temporary flame, burning brightly for a while, and then giving place to returning darkness. It is rather a spark of fervent heat, as well as radiant light, with power to enkindle the common mass of human kind; so that when it glimmers in its own decay, and finally goes out in death, no night follows, but it leaves the world all light, all on fire from the potent contact of its own spirit. Bacon died; but the human understanding, roused by the touch of his miraculous wand to a perception of the true philosophy and the just mode of inquiring after truth, has kept on its course successfully and gloriously. Newton died; yet the courses of the spheres are still known, and they yet move on by the laws which he discovered, and in the orbits which he saw, and described for them, in the infinity of space. No two men now live, fellow-citizen, perhaps it may be doubted whether any two men have ever lived in one age, who, more than those we now commemorate, have impressed on mankind their own sentiments in regard to politics and government, infused their own opinions more deeply into the opinions of others, or given a more lasting direction to the current of human thought. Their work doth not perish with them. The tree which they assisted to plant will flourish, although they water it and protect it no longer; for it has struck its roots deep, it has sent them to the very centre; no storm, not of force to burst the orb, can overturn it; its branches spread wide; they stretch their protecting arms broader and broader, and its top is destined to reach the heavens. We are not deceived. There is no delusion here. No age will come in which the American Revolution will appear less than it is, one of the greatest events in human history. No age will come in which it shall cease to be seen and felt, on either continent, that a mighty step, a great advance, not only in American affairs, but in human affairs, was made on the 4th of July, 1776. And no age will come, we trust, so ignorant or so unjust as not to see and acknowledge the efficient agency of those we now honor in producing that momentous event. We are not assembled, therefore, fellow-citizens, as men overwhelmed with calamity by the sudden disruption of the ties of friendship or affection, or as in despair for the republic by the untimely blighting of its hopes. Death has not surprised us by an unseasonable blow. We have, indeed, seen the tomb close, but it has closed only over mature years, over long-protracted public service, over the weakness of age, and over life itself only when the ends of living had been fulfilled. These suns, as they rose slowly and steadily, amidst clouds and storms, in their ascendant, so they have not rushed from the meridian to sink suddenly in the west. Like the mildness, the serenity, the continuing benignity of a summer’s day, they have gone down with slow-descending, grateful long-lingering light; and now that they are beyond the visible margin of the world, good omens cheer us from “the bright track of their fiery car”! There were many points of similarity in the lives and fortunes of these great men. They belonged to the same profession, and had pursued its studies and its practice for unequal lengths of time indeed, but with diligence and effect. Both were learned and able lawyers. They were natives and inhabitants, respectively of those two of the Colonies which at the Revolution were the largest and most powerful and which naturally had a lead in the political affairs of the times. When the Colonies became in some degree united by the assembling of a general Congress, they were brought to act together in its deliberations, not indeed at the same time but both at early periods. Each had already manifested his attachment to the cause of the country, as well as his ability to maintain it, by printed addresses, public speeches, extensive correspondence, and

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whatever other mode could be adopted for the purpose of exposing the encroachments of the British Parliament, and animating the people to a manly resistance. Both were not only decided, but early, friends of Independence. While others yet doubted, they were resolved; where others hesitated they pressed forward. They were both members of the committee for preparing the Declaration of Independence, and they constituted the sub-committee appointed by the other members to make the draft. They left their seats in Congress, being called to other public employments at periods not remote from each other, although one of them returned to it afterwards for a short time. Neither of them was of the assembly of great men which formed the present Constitution, and neither was at any time a member of Congress under its provisions. Both have been public ministers abroad, both Vice-Presidents and both Presidents of the United States. These coincidences are now singularly crowned and completed. They have died together; and they died on the anniversary of liberty. And now, fellow-citizens, without pursuing the biography of these illustrious men further, for the present let us turn our attention to the most prominent act of their lives, their participation in the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. […] It has sometimes been said, as if it were a derogation from the merits of this paper, that it contains nothing new; that it only states grounds of proceeding and presses topics of argument, which had often been stated and pressed before. But it was not the object of the Declaration to produce anything new. It was not to invent reasons for independence, but to state those which governed the Congress. For great and sufficient causes, it was proposed to declare independence; and the proper business of the paper to be drawn was to set for those causes, and justify the authors of the measure, in any event of fortune, to the country and to posterity. The cause of American independence, moreover, was now to be presented to the world in such manner, if it might so be, as to engage its sympathy, to command its respect, to attract its admiration; and in an assembly of most able and distinguished men, THOMAS JEFFERSON had the high honor of being the selected advocate of this cause. To say that he performed his great work well, would be doing him an injustice. To say that he did excellently well, admirably well, would be inadequate and halting praise. Let us rather say, that he so discharged the duty assigned him, that all Americans may well rejoice that the work of drawing the title-deed of their liberties devolved upon him. […] The Congress of the Revolution, fellow-citizens, sat with closed doors, and no report of its debates was ever made. The discussion, therefore, which accompanied this great measure, has never been preserved, except in memory and by tradition. But it is, I believe, doing injustice to others to say, that the general opinion was, and uniformly has been, that in debate, on the side of independence, JOHN ADAMS had no equal. The great author of the Declaration himself has expressed that opinion uniformly and strongly. JOHN ADAMS, said he, in the hearing of him who has now the honor to address you, JOHN ADAMS was our colossus on the floor. Not graceful, not elegant, not always fluent, in his public addresses, he yet came out with a power both of thought and of expression, which moved us from our seats. […] The eloquence of Mr. Adams resembled his general character, and formed, indeed, a part of it. It was bold, manly, and energetic; and such the crisis required. When public bodies are to be addressed on passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech farther than as it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning

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may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire to it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it comes at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country hang on the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then patriotism is eloquent; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object,—this, this is eloquence; or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence,—it is action, noble, sublime godlike action. […] Let us, then, bring before us the assembly, which was about to decide a question thus big with the fate of empire. Let us open their doors and look upon their deliberations. Let us survey the anxious and care-worn countenances, let us hear the firm-toned voices, of this band of patriots. HANCOCK presides over the solemn sitting; and one of those not yet prepared to pronounce for absolute independence is on the floor, and is urging his reasons for dissenting from the declaration. “Let us pause! This step, once taken, cannot be retracted. This resolution, once passed, will cut off all hope of reconciliation. If success attend the arms of England, we shall then be no longer Colonies, with charters and with privileges; these will all be forfeited by this act; and we shall be in the condition of other conquered people, at the mercy of the conquerors. For ourselves, we may be ready to run the hazard; but are we ready to carry the country to that length? Is success so probable as to justify it? Where is the military, where the naval power, by which we are to resist the whole strength of the arm of England, for she will exert that strength to the utmost? Can we rely on constancy and perseverance of the people? or will they not act as the people of other countries have acted and, wearied with a long war, submit, in the end, to a worse oppression? While we stand on our old ground, and insist on redress of grievances, we know we are right, and are not answerable for consequences. Nothing, then, can be imputed to us. But if we now change our object, carry our pretensions farther, and set up for absolute independence, we shall lose the sympathy of mankind. We shall no longer be defending what we possess, but struggling for something which we never did possess, and which we have solemnly and uniformly disclaimed all intention of pursuing, from the very outset of the troubles. Abandoning thus our old ground, of resistance only to arbitrary acts of oppression, the nations will believe the whole to have been mere pretense, and they will look on us, not as injured, but as ambitious subjects. I shudder before this responsibility. It will be on us, if, relinquishing the ground on which we have stood so long, and stood so safely, we now proclaim independence, and carry on the war for that object, while these cities burn, these pleasant fields whiten and bleach with the bones of their owners, and these streams run blood. It will be upon us, it will be upon us, if, failing to maintain this unseasonable and ill-judged declaration, a sterner despotism, maintained by military power, shall be exhausted, a harassed, misled people, shall have expiated our rashness and atoned for our presumption on the scaffold.”

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It was for Mr. Adams to reply to arguments like these. We know his opinions, and we know his character. He would commence with his accustomed directness and earnestness. “Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the beginning we aimed not at independence. But there’s a Divinity which shapes our ends. The injustice of England has driven us to arms; and blinded to her own interest for our good, she has obstinately persisted, till independence is now within our grasp. We have but to reach forth to it, and it is ours. Why, then, should we defer the Declaration? Is any man so weak as now to hope for a reconciliation with England, which shall leave either safety to the country and its liberties, or safety to his own life and his own honor? Are not you, Sir, who sit in that chair, is not he, our venerable colleague near you, are you not both already the proscribed and predestined objects of punishment and of vengeance? Cut off from all hope of royal clemency, what are you, what can you be, while the power of England remains, but outlaws? If we postpone independence, do we mean to carry on, or to give up, the war? Do we mean to submit to the measures of Parliament, Boston Port Bill and all? Do we mean to submit, and consent that we ourselves shall be ground to powder, and our country and its rights trodden down in the dust? I know we do not mean to submit. We shall never submit. Do we intend to violate that most solemn obligation ever entered into by men, that plighting, before God, of our sacred honor to Washington, when, putting forth to incur the dangers of war, as well as the political hazards of our times, we promised to adhere to him, in every extremity, with our fortunes and our lives? I know there is not a man here, who would not rather see a general conflagration sweep over the land, or an earthquake sink it, than one jot or tittle of that plighted faith fall to the ground. For myself, having, twelve months ago, in this place, moved you, that George Washington be appointed commander of the forces raised, or to be raised, for defense of American liberty, may my right hand forget her cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I hesitate or waver in the support I give him.” […] And now, fellow-citizens, let us not retire from this occasion without a deep and solemn conviction of the duties which have developed upon us. This lovely land, this glorious liberty, these benign institutions, the dear purchase of our fathers, are ours; ours to enjoy, ours to preserve, ours to transmit. Generations past and generations to come hold us responsible for this sacred trust. Our fathers, from behind, admonish us, with their anxious paternal voices; posterity calls out to us, from the bosom of the future; the world turns hither its solicitous eyes; all, conjure us to act wisely, and faithfully, in the relation which we sustain. We can never, indeed, pay the debt which is upon us; but by virtue, by morality, by religion, by the cultivation of every good principle and every good habit, we may hope to enjoy the blessing, through our day, and to leave it unimpaired to our children. Let us feel deeply how much of what we are and of what we possess we owe to this liberty, and to these institutions of government. Nature has, indeed, given us a soil which yields bounteously to the hand of industry, the mighty and fruitful ocean is before us, and the skies over our heads shed health and vigor. But what are lands, and seas, and skies, to civilized man, without society, without knowledge, without morals, without religious culture; and how can these be enjoyed, in all their extent and all their excellence, but under the protection of wise institutions and a free government? Fellow-citizens, there is not one of us, there is not one of us here present, who does not, at this moment, and at every moment, experience, in his own condition, and in

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the condition of those most near and dear to him, the influence and the benefits, of this liberty and these institutions. Let us then acknowledge the blessing, let us feel it deeply and powerfully, let us cherish a strong affection for it, and resolve to maintain and perpetuate it. The blood of our fathers, let it not have been shed in vain; the great hope of posterity, let it not be blasted. The striking attitude, too, in which we stand to the world around us, a topic to which, I fear, I advert too often, and dwell on too long, cannot be altogether omitted here. Neither individuals nor nations can perform their part well, until they understand and feel its importance, and comprehend and justly appreciate all the duties belonging to it. It is not to inflate national vanity, nor to swell a light and empty feeling of self-importance, but it is that we may judge justly of our situation, and of our own duties, that I earnestly urge you upon this consideration of our position and our character among the nations of the earth. It cannot be denied, but by those who would dispute against the sun, that with America, and in America, a new era commences in human affairs. This era is distinguished by free representative governments, by entire religious liberty, by improved systems of national intercourse, by a newly awakened and unconquerable spirit of free inquiry, and by a diffusion of knowledge through the community, such as has been before altogether unknown and unheard of. America, America, our country, fellow-citizens, our own dear and native land, is inseparably connected, fast bound up, in fortune and by fate, with these great interests. If they fall, we fall with them; if they stand, it will be because we have maintained them. Let us contemplate, then, this connection, which binds the prosperity of others to our own; and let us manfully discharge all the duties which it imposes. If we cherish the virtues and the principles of our fathers, Heaven will assist us to carry on the work of human liberty and human happiness. Auspicious omens cheer us. Great examples are before us. Our own firmament now shines brightly upon our path. WASHINGTON is in the clear, upper sky. These other stars have now joined the American Constellation; they circle round their centre, and the heavens beam with new light. Beneath this illumination let us walk the course of life, and at its close devoutly commend our beloved country, the common parent of us all, to the Divine Benignity.

7.  Abraham Lincoln, “Gettysburg Address” (November 19, 1863) 9 Abraham Lincoln (1809–65), who served as president from 1861 until his assassination in 1865, delivered this address on a November afternoon in 1863 to dedicate the cemetery for the soldiers who had died in the Battle of Gettysburg in July of that year. Famously brief though it is, the speech gives powerful voice to the principles of free government and to “the unfinished work” still to be completed, at a time of national despair and great uncertainty. 9

Source: We have used the Bliss copy of the address, which is currently in the White House. This is the last transcription of the address and is in Lincoln’s own hand. It is noteworthy that the reading copy that Lincoln used on the day of the address did not include the phrase “under God,” but since some of the contemporary reports mention that phrase it is likely that Lincoln spontaneously added it during the delivery.

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Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate – we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow – this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

8.  Frederick Douglass, “Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln” (April 14, 1876) 10 Frederick Douglass (1817–95), after learning to read and write as a slave in Maryland, fled to the North in 1838. There he put his impressive rhetorical skills to work in the service of abolitionism, becoming one of its most prominent leaders. Douglass delivered this speech at the Dedication of the Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Freedman’s Memorial, on the eleventh anniversary of Lincoln’s death, in Lincoln Park, Washington DC. Friends and Fellow-citizens: I warmly congratulate you upon the highly interesting object which has caused you to assemble in such numbers and spirit as you have today. This occasion is in some respects remarkable. Wise and thoughtful men of our race, who shall come after us, and study the lesson of our history in the United States; who shall survey the long and dreary spaces over which we have traveled; who shall count the links in the great chain of events by which we have reached our present position, will make a note of this occasion; they will think of it and speak of it with a sense of manly pride and complacency. I congratulate you, also, upon the very favorable circumstances in which we meet today. They are high, inspiring, and uncommon. They lend grace, glory, and significance to the object for which we have met. Nowhere else in this great country, with its uncounted towns and cities, unlimited wealth, and immeasurable territory extending from sea to sea, could conditions be found more favorable to the success of this occasion than here. 10

Source: Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/12006733.

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We stand today at the national center to perform something like a national act – an act which is to go into history; and we are here where every pulsation of the national heart can be heard, felt, and reciprocated. A thousand wires, fed with thought and winged with lightning, put us in instantaneous communication with the loyal and true men all over the country. Few facts could better illustrate the vast and wonderful change which has taken place in our condition as a people than the fact of our assembling here for the purpose we have today. Harmless, beautiful, proper, and praiseworthy as this demonstration is, I cannot forget that no such demonstration would have been tolerated here twenty years ago. The spirit of slavery and barbarism, which still lingers to blight and destroy in some dark and distant parts of our country, would have made our assembling here the signal and excuse for opening upon us all the flood-gates of wrath and violence. That we are here in peace today is a compliment and a credit to American civilization, and a prophecy of still greater national enlightenment and progress in the future. I refer to the past not in malice, for this is no day for malice; but simply to place more distinctly in front the gratifying and glorious change which has come both to our white fellow-citizens and ourselves, and to congratulate all upon the contrast between now and then; the new dispensation of freedom with its thousand blessings to both races, and the old dispensation of slavery with its ten thousand evils to both races – white and black. In view, then, of the past, the present, and the future, with the long and dark history of our bondage behind us, and with liberty, progress, and enlightenment before us, I again congratulate you upon this auspicious day and hour. Friends and fellow-citizens, the story of our presence here is soon and easily told. We are here in the District of Columbia, here in the city of Washington, the most luminous point of American territory; a city recently transformed and made beautiful in its body and in its spirit; we are here in the place where the ablest and best men of the country are sent to devise the policy, enact the laws, and shape the destiny of the Republic; we are here, with the stately pillars and majestic dome of the Capitol of the nation looking down upon us; we are here, with the broad earth freshly adorned with the foliage and flowers of spring for our church, and all races, colors, and conditions of men for our congregation – in a word, we are here to express, as best we may, by appropriate forms and ceremonies, our grateful sense of the vast, high, and preeminent services rendered to ourselves, to our race, to our country, and to the whole world by Abraham Lincoln. The sentiment that brings us here to-day is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart. It has crowned and made glorious the high places of all civilized nations with the grandest and most enduring works of art, designed to illustrate the characters and perpetuate the memories of great public men. It is the sentiment which from year to year adorns with fragrant and beautiful flowers the graves of our loyal, brave, and patriotic soldiers who fell in defense of the Union and liberty. It is the sentiment of gratitude and appreciation, which often, in the presence of many who hear me, has filled yonder heights of Arlington with the eloquence of eulogy and the sublime enthusiasm of poetry and song; a sentiment which can never die while the Republic lives. For the first time in the history of our people, and in the history of the whole American people, we join in this high worship, and march conspicuously in the line of this time-honored custom. First things are always interesting, and this is one of our first things. It is the first time that, in this form and manner, we have sought to do honor

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to an American great man, however deserving and illustrious. I commend the fact to notice; let it be told in every part of the Republic; let men of all parties and opinions hear it; let those who despise us, not less than those who respect us, know that now and here, in the spirit of liberty, loyalty, and gratitude, let it be known everywhere, and by everybody who takes an interest in human progress and in the amelioration of the condition of mankind, that, in the presence and with the approval of the members of the American House of Representatives, reflecting the general sentiment of the country; that in the presence of that august body, the American Senate, representing the highest intelligence and the calmest judgment of the country; in the presence of the Supreme Court and Chief Justice of the United States, to whose decisions we all patriotically bow; in the presence and under the steady eye of the honored and trusted President of the United States, with the members of his wise and patriotic Cabinet, we, the colored people, newly emancipated and rejoicing in our blood-bought freedom, near the close of the first century in the life of this Republic, have now and here unveiled, set apart, and dedicated a monument of enduring granite and bronze, in every line, feature, and figure of which the men of this generation may read, and those of aftercoming generations may read, something of the exalted character and great works of Abraham Lincoln, the first martyr President of the United States. Fellow-citizens, in what we have said and done today, and in what we may say and do hereafter, we disclaim everything like arrogance and assumption. We claim for ourselves no superior devotion to the character, history, and memory of the illustrious name whose monument we have here dedicated today. We fully comprehend the relation of Abraham Lincoln both to ourselves and to the white people of the United States. Truth is proper and beautiful at all times and in all places, and it is never more proper and beautiful in any case than when speaking of a great public man whose example is likely to be commended for honor and imitation long after his departure to the solemn shades, the silent continents of eternity. It must be admitted, truth compels me to admit, even here in the presence of the monument we have erected to his memory, Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man. He was preeminently the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country. In all his education and feeling he was an American of the Americans. He came into the Presidential chair upon one principle alone, namely, opposition to the extension of slavery. His arguments in furtherance of this policy had their motive and mainspring in his patriotic devotion to the interests of his own race. To protect, defend, and perpetuate slavery in the states where it existed Abraham Lincoln was not less ready than any other President to draw the sword of the nation. He was ready to execute all the supposed guarantees of the United States Constitution in favor of the slave system anywhere inside the slave states. He was willing to pursue, recapture, and send back the fugitive slave to his master, and to suppress a slave rising for liberty, though his guilty master were already in arms against the Government. The race to which we belong were not the special objects of his consideration. Knowing this, I concede to you, my white fellow-citizens, a pre-eminence in this worship at once full and supreme. First, midst, and last, you and yours were the objects of his deepest affection and his most earnest solicitude. You

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are the children of Abraham Lincoln. We are at best only his step-children; children by adoption, children by forces of circumstances and necessity. To you it especially belongs to sound his praises, to preserve and perpetuate his memory, to multiply his statues, to hang his pictures high upon your walls, and commend his example, for to you he was a great and glorious friend and benefactor. Instead of supplanting you at his altar, we would exhort you to build high his monuments; let them be of the most costly material, of the most cunning workmanship; let their forms be symmetrical, beautiful, and perfect, let their bases be upon solid rocks, and their summits lean against the unchanging blue, overhanging sky, and let them endure forever! But while in the abundance of your wealth, and in the fullness of your just and patriotic devotion, you do all this, we entreat you to despise not the humble offering we this day unveil to view; for while Abraham Lincoln saved for you a country, he delivered us from a bondage, according to Jefferson, one hour of which was worse than ages of the oppression your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose. Fellow-citizens, ours is no new-born zeal and devotion – merely a thing of this moment. The name of Abraham Lincoln was near and dear to our hearts in the darkest and most perilous hours of the Republic. We were no more ashamed of him when shrouded in clouds of darkness, of doubt, and defeat than when we saw him crowned with victory, honor, and glory. Our faith in him was often taxed and strained to the uttermost, but it never failed. When he tarried long in the mountain; when he strangely told us that we were the cause of the war; when he still more strangely told us that we were to leave the land in which we were born; when he refused to employ our arms in defense of the Union; when, after accepting our services as colored soldiers, he refused to retaliate our murder and torture as colored prisoners; when he told us he would save the Union if he could with slavery; when he revoked the Proclamation of Emancipation of General Fremont; when he refused to remove the popular commander of the Army of the Potomac, in the days of its inaction and defeat, who was more zealous in his efforts to protect slavery than to suppress rebellion; when we saw all this, and more, we were at times grieved, stunned, and greatly bewildered; but our hearts believed while they ached and bled. Nor was this, even at that time, a blind and unreasoning superstition. Despite the mist and haze that surrounded him; despite the tumult, the hurry, and confusion of the hour, we were able to take a comprehensive view of Abraham Lincoln, and to make reasonable allowance for the circumstances of his position. We saw him, measured him, and estimated him; not by stray utterances to injudicious and tedious delegations, who often tried his patience; not by isolated facts torn from their connection; not by any partial and imperfect glimpses, caught at inopportune moments; but by a broad survey, in the light of the stern logic of great events, and in view of that divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will, we came to the conclusion that the hour and the man of our redemption had somehow met in the person of Abraham Lincoln. It mattered little to us what language he might employ on special occasions; it mattered little to us, when we fully knew him, whether he was swift or slow in his movements; it was enough for us that Abraham Lincoln was at the head of a great movement, and was in living and earnest sympathy with that movement, which, in the nature of things, must go on until slavery should be utterly and forever abolished in the United States. When, therefore, it shall be asked what we have to do with the memory of Abraham Lincoln, or what Abraham Lincoln had to do with us, the answer is ready, full, and complete. Though he loved Caesar less than Rome, though the Union was more to him

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than our freedom or our future, under his wise and beneficent rule we saw ourselves gradually lifted from the depths of slavery to the heights of liberty and manhood; under his wise and beneficent rule, and by measures approved and vigorously pressed by him, we saw that the handwriting of ages, in the form of prejudice and proscription, was rapidly fading away from the face of our whole country; under his rule, and in due time, about as soon after all as the country could tolerate the strange spectacle, we saw our brave sons and brothers laying off the rags of bondage, and being clothed all over in the blue uniforms of the soldiers of the United States; under his rule we saw two hundred thousand of our dark and dusky people responding to the call of Abraham Lincoln, and with muskets on their shoulders, and eagles on their buttons, timing their high footsteps to liberty and union under the national flag; under his rule we saw the independence of the black republic of Haiti, the special object of slave-holding aversion and horror, fully recognized, and her minister, a colored gentleman, duly received here in the city of Washington; under his rule we saw the internal slave-trade, which so long disgraced the nation, abolished, and slavery abolished in the District of Columbia; under his rule we saw for the first time the law enforced against the foreign slave trade, and the first slave-trader hanged like any other pirate or murderer; under his rule, assisted by the greatest captain of our age, and his inspiration, we saw the Confederate States, based upon the idea that our race must be slaves, and slaves forever, battered to pieces and scattered to the four winds; under his rule, and in the fullness of time, we saw Abraham Lincoln, after giving the slave-holders three months’ grace in which to save their hateful slave system, penning the immortal paper, which, though special in its language, was general in its principles and effect, making slavery forever impossible in the United States. Though we waited long, we saw all this and more. Can any colored man, or any white man friendly to the freedom of all men, ever forget the night which followed the first day of January, 1863, when the world was to see if Abraham Lincoln would prove to be as good as his word? I shall never forget that memorable night, when in a distant city I waited and watched at a public meeting, with three thousand others not less anxious than myself, for the word of deliverance which we have heard read today. Nor shall I ever forget the outburst of joy and thanksgiving that rent the air when the lightning brought to us the emancipation proclamation. In that happy hour we forgot all delay, and forgot all tardiness, forgot that the President had bribed the rebels to lay down their arms by a promise to withhold the bolt which would smite the slave-system with destruction; and we were thenceforward willing to allow the President all the latitude of time, phraseology, and every honorable device that statesmanship might require for the achievement of a great and beneficent measure of liberty and progress. Fellow-citizens, there is little necessity on this occasion to speak at length and critically of this great and good man, and of his high mission in the world. That ground has been fully occupied and completely covered both here and elsewhere. The whole field of fact and fancy has been gleaned and garnered. Any man can say things that are true of Abraham Lincoln, but no man can say anything that is new of Abraham Lincoln. His personal traits and public acts are better known to the American people than are those of any other man of his age. He was a mystery to no man who saw him and heard him. Though high in position, the humblest could approach him and feel at home in his presence. Though deep, he was transparent; though strong, he was gentle; though decided and pronounced in his convictions, he was tolerant towards those who differed from him, and patient under reproaches. Even those who only knew him through his public

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utterance obtained a tolerably clear idea of his character and personality. The image of the man went out with his words, and those who read them knew him. I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined. Though Mr. Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the Negro, it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery. The man who could say, “Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war shall soon pass away, yet if God wills it continue till all the wealth piled by two hundred years of bondage shall have been wasted, and each drop of blood drawn by the lash shall have been paid for by one drawn by the sword, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether,” gives all needed proof of his feeling on the subject of slavery. He was willing, while the South was loyal, that it should have its pound of flesh, because he thought that it was so nominated in the bond; but farther than this no earthly power could make him go. Fellow-citizens, whatever else in this world may be partial, unjust, and uncertain, time, time! is impartial, just, and certain in its action. In the realm of mind, as well as in the realm of matter, it is a great worker, and often works wonders. The honest and comprehensive statesman, clearly discerning the needs of his country, and earnestly endeavoring to do his whole duty, though covered and blistered with reproaches, may safely leave his course to the silent judgment of time. Few great public men have ever been the victims of fiercer denunciation than Abraham Lincoln was during his administration. He was often wounded in the house of his friends. Reproaches came thick and fast upon him from within and from without, and from opposite quarters. He was assailed by Abolitionists; he was assailed by slave-holders; he was assailed by the men who were for peace at any price; he was assailed by those who were for a more vigorous prosecution of the war; he was assailed for not making the war an abolition war; and he was bitterly assailed for making the war an abolition war. But now behold the change: the judgment of the present hour is, that taking him for all in all, measuring the tremendous magnitude of the work before him, considering the necessary means to ends, and surveying the end from the beginning, infinite wisdom has seldom sent any man into the world better fitted for his mission than Abraham Lincoln. His birth, his training, and his natural endowments, both mental and physical, were strongly in his favor. Born and reared among the lowly, a stranger to wealth and luxury, compelled to grapple single-handed with the flintiest hardships of life, from tender youth to sturdy manhood, he grew strong in the manly and heroic qualities demanded

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by the great mission to which he was called by the votes of his countrymen. The hard condition of his early life, which would have depressed and broken down weaker men, only gave greater life, vigor, and buoyancy to the heroic spirit of Abraham Lincoln. He was ready for any kind and any quality of work. What other young men dreaded in the shape of toil, he took hold of with the utmost cheerfulness. “A spade, a rake, a hoe, A pick-axe, or a bill; A hook to reap, a scythe to mow, A flail, or what you will.” All day long he could split heavy rails in the woods, and half the night long he could study his English Grammar by the uncertain flare and glare of the light made by a pine-knot. He was at home in the land with his axe, with his maul, with gluts, and his wedges; and he was equally at home on water, with his oars, with his poles, with his planks, and with his boat-hooks. And whether in his flat-boat on the Mississippi River, or at the fireside of his frontier cabin, he was a man of work. A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the Republic. This very fact gave him tremendous power with the American people, and materially contributed not only to selecting him to the Presidency, but in sustaining his administration of the Government. Upon his inauguration as President of the United States, an office, even when assumed under the most favorable condition, fitted to tax and strain the largest abilities, Abraham Lincoln was met by a tremendous crisis. He was called upon not merely to administer the Government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic. A formidable rebellion rose in his path before him; the Union was already practically dissolved; his country was torn and rent asunder at the center. Hostile armies were already organized against the Republic, armed with the munitions of war which the Republic had provided for its own defense. The tremendous question for him to decide was whether his country should survive the crisis and flourish, or be dismembered and perish. His predecessor in office had already decided the question in favor of national dismemberment, by denying to it the right of self-defense and self-preservation – a right which belongs to the meanest insect. Happily for the country, happily for you and for me, the judgment of James Buchanan, the patrician, was not the judgment of Abraham Lincoln, the plebeian. He brought his strong common sense, sharpened in the school of adversity, to bear upon the question. He did not hesitate, he did not doubt, he did not falter; but at once resolved that at whatever peril, at whatever cost, the union of the States should be preserved. A patriot himself, his faith was strong and unwavering in the patriotism of his countrymen. Timid men said before Mr. Lincoln’s inauguration, that we have seen the last President of the United States. A voice in influential quarters said, “Let the Union slide.” Some said that a Union maintained by the sword was worthless. Others said a rebellion of 8,000,000 cannot be suppressed; but in the midst of all this tumult and timidity, and against all this, Abraham Lincoln was clear in his duty, and had an oath in heaven. He calmly and bravely heard the voice of doubt and fear all around him; but he had an oath in heaven, and there was not power enough on earth to make this honest boatman, backwoodsman, and broad-handed splitter of rails evade or violate that sacred oath. He had not been schooled in the ethics of slavery; his plain life had favored his love of truth. He had not been taught that treason and perjury

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were the proof of honor and honesty. His moral training was against his saying one thing when he meant another. The trust that Abraham Lincoln had in himself and in the people was surprising and grand, but it was also enlightened and well founded. He knew the American people better than they knew themselves, and his truth was based upon this knowledge. Fellow-citizens, the fourteenth day of April, 1865, of which this is the eleventh anniversary, is now and will ever remain a memorable day in the annals of this Republic. It was on the evening of this day, while a fierce and sanguinary rebellion was in the last stages of its desolating power; while its armies were broken and scattered before the invincible armies of Grant and Sherman; while a great nation, torn and rent by war, was already beginning to raise to the skies loud anthems of joy at the dawn of peace, it was startled, amazed, and overwhelmed by the crowning crime of slavery – the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It was a new crime, a pure act of malice. No purpose of the rebellion was to be served by it. It was the simple gratification of a hell-black spirit of revenge. But it has done good after all. It has filled the country with a deeper abhorrence of slavery and a deeper love for the great liberator. Had Abraham Lincoln died from any of the numerous ills to which flesh is heir; had he reached that good old age of which his vigorous constitution and his temperate habits gave promise; had he been permitted to see the end of his great work; had the solemn curtain of death come down but gradually – we should still have been smitten with a heavy grief, and treasured his name lovingly. But dying as he did die, by the red hand of violence, killed, assassinated, taken off without warning, not because of personal hate – for no man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him – but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever. Fellow-citizens, I end, as I began, with congratulations. We have done a good work for our race today. In doing honor to the memory of our friend and liberator, we have been doing highest honors to ourselves and those who come after us; we have been fastening ourselves to a name and fame imperishable and immortal; we have also been defending ourselves from a blighting scandal. When now it shall be said that the colored man is soulless, that he has no appreciation of benefits or benefactors; when the foul reproach of ingratitude is hurled at us, and it is attempted to scourge us beyond the range of human brotherhood, we may calmly point to the monument we have this day erected to the memory of Abraham Lincoln.

9.  Robert Kennedy, “Remarks on the Assassination of MLK” (April 4, 1968) 11 Robert F. Kennedy (1925–68) served as Attorney General (1961–64) in the administration of his brother John F. Kennedy and then as Senator from New York (1965–68). Kennedy delivered this speech, impromptu, while campaigning for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in Indianapolis, a few hours after the assassination of MLK. Kennedy himself would be assassinated two months later. 11

Source: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/statement-on-thedeath-of-martin-luther-king-jr-april4-1968.

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Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening, because I have some – some very sad news for all of you – Could you lower those signs, please? – I have some very sad news for all of you, and, I think, sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world; and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee. Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it’s perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black – considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible – you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization – black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love. For those of you who are black and are tempted to fill with – be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States. We have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond, or go beyond these rather difficult times. My favorite poem, my – my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote: Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God. What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black. So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King – yeah, it’s true – but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love – a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We’ve had difficult times in the past, but we – and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it’s not the end of disorder. But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land. And let’s dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people. Thank you very much.

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Judicial Rhetoric 1. Aristotle,

art of rhetoric

1.10, 12, 14 (excerpts)

Book 1, Chapter 10 Next would be to speak about what concerns accusation and defense – from how many and what sorts of things the syllogisms should be formed. […] So let doing injustice be doing harm voluntarily contrary to the law. And “law” is both particular law and general law. I mean by “particular” the law that has been written down in accord with which people govern themselves, whereas by “general” I mean all those unwritten laws that seem to be agreed on by everyone. And people carry out voluntarily all such things as they know [they are doing] and are not compelled to do. Things that people do voluntarily are not in all cases objects of their choice, but things they do choose are, all of them, done knowingly, for nobody chooses what he is ignorant of. People choose to do harm and to perform base acts contrary to the law on account of vice and a lack of self-restraint. If certain people have a moral defect, either one or more than one, then they are unjust also in connection with that defect they happen to have. For example, one person is illiberal concerning money; another is licentious concerning the bodily pleasures; another, soft when it comes to taking the easy way; another, a coward concerning dangers, for on account of their fear, people abandon those who run risks with them; another is ambitious on account of honor; another sharp-tempered on account of his anger; another is rivalrous for victory; another bitter on account of vengeance; another a fool because he is deceived about just and unjust; another shameless because he thinks little of reputation – and similarly in the case of each of the others with their underlying [defects] respectively. But what concerns these is clear – some points on the basis of what has been said about the virtues, others on the basis of what will be said about the passions. […] To speak in a summary way: quite all the things that people do on their own account are either good or appear good, or are pleasant or appear pleasant. And since all that people do on their own account they do voluntarily, but involuntarily all that they do not do on their own account, all that people do voluntarily would be such things as either are good or appear good or are pleasant or appear pleasant [….] Chapter 12 […] People commit injustice whenever they suppose that it is possible for the matter in question to be carried out, and possible for them themselves, whether in carrying it out they would go undetected or, in failing to go undetected, they would pay no penalty or, in paying a penalty, the punishment they would suffer would be less than the profit they would gain for themselves or for those they care about. […] But those who are capable speakers, and those skilled in action and experienced in many contests, suppose that they are especially capable of committing injustice without suffering punishment, if they have many friends to boot, and if they are wealthy. And they suppose that they are capable of injustice especially if they themselves fall among the classes stated, but, failing that, if they have friends of that sort available to them, or servants or partners. It is for these reasons that they are capable of both acting and going undetected and not paying a penalty. So too if they are the friends of those treated

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unjustly or of the judges. For friends, on the one hand, are not on guard against suffering injustice and, in addition, reconcile before taking the matter to court; and judges, on the other, gratify those who are their friends and either let them off altogether or impose small punishments. Chapter 14 An unjust act is greater, the greater the injustice from which it stems. Hence the least things may be the greatest injustices – as, for example, what Callistratus accused Melanopus of, namely, that he defrauded the temple-administrators of three consecrated half-obols12 – whereas when it comes to justice the opposite holds. These things are so as a result of the potential that lies within [the perpetrator]: he who stole three consecrated half-obols might commit any injustice whatsoever. So the greater injustice is sometimes judged in this way, but sometimes from the actual harm that results. And [an injustice] for which there is no vengeance equal [to the harm done], but every act of vengeance instead proves insufficient, [is a greater injustice than one for which such vengeance can be exacted], as well as that injustice for which there is no remedy, for it is a difficult – in fact an impossible – thing [to avenge]. And that injustice for which the sufferer can attain no legal trial, for then it is without remedy: a legal trial is both a punishment and a remedy. And the injustice involved is greater if the very person who has suffered and been done an injustice has inflicted on himself a great punishment, for then he who has done the injustice deserves to be punished by a still greater penalty. For example, Sophocles, when pleading on behalf of Euctemon, who had slit his own throat after having been insolently treated, said that he (Sophocles) assessed as a penalty nothing less than what the sufferer had assessed in his own case. And that unjust act is greater which one has committed alone or first or together with few others; and to err time and again is a great matter. And that unjust act is greater for which preventative and punitive measures are sought out and invented – as in Argos, for example, where they punish the person on whose account a law is passed, as well as those on whose account a prison is built. And the more bestial the unjust act, the greater it is, and so too the more it proceeds from forethought. And that which fosters, in those who hear of it, greater fear than pity. And the devices of the rhetorical art are of such a character, [to the effect] that someone has destroyed or transgressed many just obligations (for example, oaths, pledges, sureties, marriage vows), since this constitutes an excess made up of many particular injustices. And [an act of injustice is greater when it is committed] in the very place where the unjust are punished, which is in fact what those who bear false witness do: where would they not commit injustice, if they would do it even in a courtroom?

2.  Socrates’ Address to the Jury After his Conviction: Plato, apology of socrates 38c–end (399 bc)13 The philosopher Socrates was tried and convicted, by a jury of four or five hundred of his fellow Athenians, on the two-fold charge of not believing in

12 13

Nothing is known of this incident, although three half-obols are a small sum. Translated by Nathan Davis for this volume.

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the gods of the city and of corrupting the young. After the guilty verdict was reached, Socrates was compelled to recommend to the jury an appropriate penalty, a recommendation (for free meals for life at the city’s expense!) the jury declined to follow: they handed down a death sentence instead. In the selection that appears below, with which Plato’s Apology concludes, Socrates addresses first the jurors who had voted to convict him, then those – a substantial minority of the whole – who had voted for acquittal. [38c] For the sake of saving a little time, Athenian men, you’ll be given a name and be blamed by those who want to censure the city, on the grounds that you have killed Socrates, a wise man – for of course those who want to reproach you will assert that I am wise, even if I’m not. Yet if you’d waited just a short while, this would have happened for you of its own accord: surely you see that I’m already far along in life and in fact near death. I say this not to all of you, but only to those who condemned me to death. I also say the following to these same people: [38d] Maybe you think, Athenian men, that I’ve been convicted because I’m at a loss for the sort of speeches with which I could have persuaded you, if I thought I ought to do and say anything at all in order to be acquitted. Far from it. But I have been convicted because I am at a loss – not, however, in point of speeches, but when it comes to daring and shamelessness and the willingness to tell you the sorts of things it would have most pleased you to hear: me wailing and moaning, doing as well as saying many other things that I assert are [38e] unworthy of me, the very sort of thing you’ve gotten used to hearing from others. But I didn’t think then that, on account of the danger involved, I ought to do anything unbecoming a free man; nor do I now regret having delivered my defense speech this way. Rather, I much prefer to die after delivering my defense speech in this way than to live having done it in that other way: neither in court nor in war ought either I or anyone else contrive things so that he’ll escape death by doing just anything. [39a] For even in battles, it often becomes clear that someone could avoid dying, at least, by tossing aside his arms and turning to beg his pursuers; and there are many other contrivances to escape death in each type of danger, if one dares to do and say just anything. But escaping death may not be so difficult, men; it is instead much more difficult to escape wickedness: it dashes faster than death. And [39b] now, since I’m slow and old, I’m caught by the slower, while my accusers, since they’re clever and sharp, they’re caught by the faster, by vice. So now I’ll go my way, condemned by you to a penalty of death, while they go theirs, condemned by truth for their depravity and injustice. And I abide by my penalty, and they by theirs. It may even be, I suppose, that these things had to turn out like this, and I think they’re turning out fairly well. [39c] Next, I want to deliver a prophecy to you, my condemners. For I’m already in that place where human beings most of all deliver prophecies: when they are about to die. So I assert, you men who have put me to death, that a punishment will come upon you right after my death, one much harsher, by Zeus, than the sort you’ve exacted in killing me; for you did that just now thinking that you’ll rid yourselves of having to give an account of your life, but it will turn out just the opposite for you, I assert. There will be more people cross-examining you, [39d] people whom I was reining in for the time being, although you didn’t notice it; and they’ll be harsher, inasmuch as they’re younger, and you’ll be still more indignant. For if you think that executing people will prevent anyone from censuring you on the grounds that you’re not living correctly, then you’re not considering the matter in a noble manner. For ridding oneself of reproach in

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that way is not really possible or noble, while doing so in this way is noblest and easy: not by hindering others, but instead by someone’s taking care that he himself will be the best possible. So, now that I have delivered these prophecies to you who voted to condemn me, I take my leave. [39e] But with those who voted to acquit me, I would gladly converse about this matter that’s come to pass – while the magistrates are busy and I’m not yet going to the place where, upon arrival, I must die. So, stay with me this long, men; after all, nothing prevents our having a comforting discussion14 with one another for as long as that is possible. [40a] For, on the grounds that you are friends, I’m willing to show you the meaning of this matter that’s just happened to me. Indeed, jurymen – by addressing you as jurors, I’d be addressing you correctly – something wondrous has happened to me. For my accustomed prophetic sign from the daimonion15 was always most insistent in all earlier times, opposing me even in very small things if I was about to do something incorrectly. But now these very things that you yourselves see have happened to me, things that one could surely think are – and that are generally regarded as – evils in the extreme. But [40b] the god’s sign didn’t oppose me when I left my house at dawn, nor when I came up here to the court, nor at any point in the speech when I was about to say something. And yet, in other speeches, indeed at many points, it restrained me when I was in the middle of speaking; but just now it did not oppose me at any point pertaining to this business, not in any deed or speech. What do I hold responsible for this? I’ll tell you. For it seems likely that what’s happened to me has turned out to be good, and it must be that we’re not grasping it correctly, those among us who think that being dead is bad. I have great evidence [40c] of this: there is no way my accustomed sign would not have opposed me, if I’d not been about to do something good. But let’s consider also in the following way how much hope there is that it’s good. For being dead is one of two things: either he who has died is such as to be nothing and to have no perception of anything at all, or, according to what’s said, there happens to be a certain change and relocation of the soul from its place here to another place. And if indeed there is no perception, but it is just like [40d] a slumber in which the sleeper sees no dream at all, death would be a wondrous benefit. For I think that, if someone should have to pick out that night in which he fell asleep and saw no dream, and – after comparing that night with all the other nights and days of his own life should have to examine it and say how many days and nights he’s lived in the course of his own life that were better and more pleasant than that night, I think that he – and not just some private fellow, but even the great king of Persia – he would find them easy to count [40e] compared to all his other days and nights. If death is like this, then, I for my part say that it’s a benefit. For in this way, even the whole of time appears to be nothing more than one night. 14

15

Although the verb here (diamuthologēsai) can be used as a synonym for “converse,” it has the word for “myth” at its root, and Plato tends to distinguish muthos from logos; consider, e.g., Laws 632e. Daimonion is an unconventional Greek noun meaning roughly “something from or belonging to a divine being.” Earlier in his speech, Socrates describes his daimonion as “a voice that comes to me” and adds: “this began in my boyhood […] and whenever it comes, it always turns me away from whatever I am about to do; it never turns me forward” (Apology 31d). For some of Socrates’ other accounts of his daimonion, consider Plato, Theages (128d–131a), Phaedrus (242b–d), Theaetetus (151a) and Euthydemus (272e).

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But if in turn death is like traveling from here to another place, and what’s said is true – namely, that all the dead are there – what could be a greater good than this, jurymen? For if someone [41a] who’s arrived in Hades, rid of these fellows here who claim to be jurors, will discover jurors in the true sense, the very men who are said to judge there – Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus and so many other of the demigods as were just in their own lives – then would the trip be a paltry one? Or, further, to keep company with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer – how much would any of you give for this? I for my part am willing to die often if these things are true, since [41b] for me too there would be a wondrous pastime right there whenever I should happen upon Palamedes and Ajax son of Telamon and anyone else among the ancients who has died on account of an unjust judgment: comparing the things I experienced to those they experienced would not be unpleasant, I shouldn’t think. Moreover, the greatest thing would be to spend time questioning and examining those there, just as with those living here, to see who among them is wise and who only thinks he is but is not. So how much would any of you give, jurymen, to examine [41c] the leader of the great army at Troy, or Odysseus, or Sisyphus, or countless others one could mention, both men and women, with whom it would be an inconceivable happiness to discourse and associate and examine there? Surely those there in no way execute people for this reason; for in other respects too those there are happier than those here, and, further, they are deathless for the rest of time, if indeed what’s said is true. But you too, jurymen, must be hopeful toward death and consider this one thing to be true: that there is nothing bad [41d] for a good man, whether he is living or has met his end, and that his affairs are not neglected by the gods. Nor have these things happened to me merely of their own accord. Rather, this is clear to me: that it was surely better for me to have died and to be relieved of troubles. For this reason, too, the sign in no way deterred me, and I feel no harshness at all toward those who condemned or to those who accused me – although they were not condemning and accusing me with this thought in mind, but rather because they supposed they were causing harm. For that they do deserve blame. Nonetheless, [41e] I ask this much from them: punish my sons, men, when they grow up, by vexing them in the same ways in which I used to vex you. If they seem to you to care for money or something else before virtue, and if they seem to be something despite not being it, then reproach them just as I reproached you, to the effect that they don’t care about the things they ought and that they think they’re something despite being worthy of nothing. And if you do these things, I’ll have been treated [42a] justly by you, both I myself as well as my sons. But surely the hour now approaches for me to go to die and for you to go on living. Whichever of us sets off for the better thing is unclear to everyone, except to the god.

3. Cicero, first oration (excerpts) (63 bc) 16

against catiline

The Roman statesman, orator, and philosopher Cicero is perhaps best known for his speeches denouncing his fellow Roman senator, Lucius Sergius Catilina – more commonly referred to in English as Catiline – for attempting 16

Source: The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, trans. C.D. Yonge (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1856).

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to overthrow the consulship of Cicero and his co-consul Gaius Antonius Hybrida. Catiline had lost election to the consulship the year before, and he banded together with other disaffected aristocrats to attempt to take the reins of government by force. Catiline was compelled to flee Rome as a result of Cicero’s fiery denunciations. When, O Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end of that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now? Do not the nightly guards placed on the Palatine Hill – do not the watches posted throughout the city – does not the alarm of the people, and the union of all good men – does not the precaution taken of assembling the senate in this most defensible place – do not the looks and countenances of this venerable body here present, have any effect upon you? Do you not feel that your plans are detected? Do you not see that your conspiracy is already arrested and rendered powerless by the knowledge which everyone here possesses of it? What is there that you did last night, what the night before – where is it that you were – who was there that you summoned to meet you – what design was there which was adopted by you, with which you think that any one of us is unacquainted? Shame on the age and on its principles! The Senate is aware of these things; the consul sees them; and yet this man lives. Lives! aye, he comes even into the Senate. He takes a part in the public deliberations; he is watching and marking down and checking off for slaughter every individual among us. And we, gallant men that we are, think that we are doing our duty to the republic if we keep out of the way of his frenzied attacks. You ought, O Catiline, long ago to have been led to execution by command of the consul. That destruction which you have been long plotting against us ought to have already fallen on your own head. […] There was once such virtue in this republic, that brave men would repress mischievous citizens with severer chastisement than the most bitter enemy. For we have a resolution of the Senate, a formidable and authoritative decree against you, O Catiline; the wisdom of the republic is not at fault, nor the dignity of this senatorial body. We, we alone, – I say it openly, – we, the consuls, are wanting in our duty. […] But we, for these twenty days, have been allowing the edge of the Senate’s authority to grow blunt, as it were. For we are in possession of a similar decree of the Senate, but we keep it locked up in its parchment – buried, I may say, in the sheath; and according to this decree you ought, O Catiline, to be put to death this instant. You live, – and you live, not to lay aside, but to persist in your audacity. I wish, O conscript fathers, to be merciful; I wish not to appear negligent amid such danger to the state; but I do now accuse myself of remissness and culpable inactivity. A camp is pitched in Italy, at the entrance of Etruria, in hostility to the republic; the number of the enemy increases every day; and yet the general of that camp, the leader of those enemies, we see within the walls – yes, and even in the Senate – planning every day some internal injury to the republic. If, O Catiline, I should now order you to be arrested, to be put to death, I should, I suppose, have to fear lest all good men should say that I had acted tardily, rather than that any one should affirm that I acted cruelly. […] For what is there, O Catiline, that you can still expect, if night is not able to veil your nefarious meetings in darkness, and if private houses cannot conceal the voice of

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your conspiracy within their walls; – if everything is seen and displayed? Change your mind: trust me: forget the slaughter and conflagration you are meditating. You are hemmed in on all sides; all your plans are clearer than the day to us; let me remind you of them. Do you recollect that on the 21st of October I said in the Senate, that on a certain day, which was to be the 27th of October, C. Manlius, the satellite and servant of your audacity, would be in arms? Was I mistaken, Catiline, not only in so important, so atrocious, so incredible a fact, but, what is much more remarkable, in the very day? I said also in the Senate that you had fixed the massacre of the nobles for the 28th of October, when many chief men of the Senate had left Rome, not so much for the sake of saving themselves as of checking your designs. Can you deny that on that very day you were so hemmed in by my guards and my vigilance, that you were unable to stir one finger against the republic; when you said that you would be content with the flight of the rest, and the slaughter of us who remained? What? when you made sure that you would be able to seize Praeneste on the first of November by a nocturnal attack, did you not find that that colony was fortified by my order, by my garrison, by my watchfulness and care? You do nothing, you plan nothing, you think of nothing which I not only do not hear, but which I do not see and know every particular of. […] O ye immortal gods, where on earth are we? in what city are we living? what constitution is ours? There are here, – here in our body, O conscript fathers, in this the most holy and dignified assembly of the whole world, men who meditate my death, and the death of all of us, and the destruction of this city, and of the whole world. I, the consul, see them; I ask them their opinion about the republic, and I do not yet attack, even by words, those who ought to be put to death by the sword. You were, then, O Catiline, at Lecca’s that night; you divided Italy into sections; you settled where everyone was to go; you fixed whom you were to leave at Rome, whom you were to take with you; you portioned out the divisions of the city for conflagration; you undertook that you yourself would at once leave the city, and said that there was then only this to delay you, that I was still alive. Two Roman knights were found to deliver you from this anxiety, and to promise that very night, before daybreak, to slay me in my bed. All this I knew almost before your meeting had broken up. I strengthened and fortified my house with a stronger guard; I refused admittance, when they came, to those whom you sent in the morning to salute me, and of whom I had foretold to many eminent men that they would come to me at that time. As, then, this is the case, O Catiline, continue as you have begun. Leave the city at last; the gates are open; depart. That Manlian camp of yours has been waiting too long for you as its general. And lead forth with you all your friends, or at least as many as you can; purge the city of your presence; you will deliver me from a great fear, when there is a wall between me and you. Among us you can dwell no longer – I will not bear it, I will not permit it, I will not tolerate it. Great thanks are due to the immortal gods, and to this very Jupiter Stator, in whose temple we are, the most ancient protector of this city, that we have already so often escaped so foul, so horrible, and so deadly an enemy to the republic. But the safety of the commonwealth must not be too often allowed to be risked on one man. As long as you, O Catiline, plotted against me while I was the consul elect, I defended myself not with a public guard, but by my own private diligence. When, in the next consular comitia, you wished to slay me when I was actually consul, and your competitors also, in the Campus Martius, I checked your nefarious attempt by the assistance and resources of my own friends, without exciting any disturbance publicly. In short, as often as you attacked me, I by myself opposed

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you, and that, too, though I saw that my ruin was connected with great disaster to the republic. But now you are openly attacking the entire republic. You are summoning to destruction and devastation the temples of the immortal gods, the houses of the city, the lives of all the citizens; in short, all Italy. Wherefore, since I do not yet venture to do that which is the best thing, and which belongs to my office and to the discipline of our ancestors, I will do that which is more merciful if we regard its rigour, and more expedient for the state. For if I order you to be put to death, the rest of the conspirators will still remain in the republic; if, as I have long been exhorting you, you depart, your companions, those worthless dregs of the republic, will be drawn off from the city too. What is the matter, Catiline? Do you hesitate to do that which I order you which you were already doing of your own accord? The consul orders an enemy to depart from the city. Do you ask me, Are you to go into banishment? I do not order it; but, if you consult me, I advise it. […] But now, what is that life of yours that you are leading? For I will speak to you not so as to seem influenced by the hatred I ought to feel, but by pity, nothing of which is due to you. You came a little while ago into the Senate in so numerous an assembly; who of so many friends and connections of yours saluted you? If this in the memory of man never happened to anyone else, are you waiting for insults by word of mouth, when you are overwhelmed by the most irresistible condemnation of silence? Is it nothing that at your arrival all those seats were vacated? that all the men of consular rank, who had often been marked out by you for slaughter, the very moment you sat down, left that part of the benches bare and vacant? With what feelings do you think you ought to bear this? On my honour, if my slaves feared me as all your fellow-citizens fear you, I should think I must leave my house. Do not you think you should leave the city? If I saw that I was even undeservedly so suspected and hated by my fellow-citizens, I would rather flee from their sight than be gazed at by the hostile eyes of everyone. And do you, who, from the consciousness of your wickedness, know that the hatred of all men is just and has been long due to you, hesitate to avoid the sight and presence of those men whose minds and senses you offend? […] Since, then, this is the case, do you hesitate, O Catiline, if you cannot remain here with tranquility, to depart to some distant land, and to trust your life, saved from just and deserved punishment, to flight and solitude? Make a motion, say you, to the Senate (for that is what you demand) and if this body votes that you ought to go into banishment, you say that you will obey. I will not make such a motion, it is contrary to my principles, and yet I will let you see what these men think of you. Be gone from the city, O Catiline, deliver the republic from fear; depart into banishment, if that is the word you are waiting for. What now, O Catiline? Do you not perceive, do you not see the silence of these men; they permit it, they say nothing; why wait you for the authority of their words when you see their wishes in their silence? […] And yet, why am I speaking? that anything may change your purpose? that you may ever amend your life? that you may meditate flight or think of voluntary banishment? I wish the gods may give you such a mind; though I see, if alarmed at my words you bring your mind to go into banishment, what a storm of unpopularity hangs over me, if not at present, while the memory of your wickedness is fresh, at all events hereafter. But it is worthwhile to incur that, as long as that is but a private misfortune of my own, and is unconnected with the dangers of the republic. But we cannot expect that you should be concerned at your own vices, that you should fear the penalties of the laws, or that you should yield to the necessities of the republic,

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for you are not, O Catiline, one whom either shame can recall from infamy, or fear from danger, or reason from madness. Wherefore, as I have said before, go forth, and if you wish to make me, your enemy, as you call me, unpopular, go straight into banishment. I shall scarcely be able to endure all that will be said if you do so; I shall scarcely be able to support my load of unpopularity if you do go into banishment at the command of the consul; but if you wish to serve my credit and reputation, go forth with your ill-omened band of profligates; betake yourself to Manlius, rouse up the abandoned citizens, separate yourself from the good ones, wage war against your country, exult in your impious banditti, so that you may not seem to have been driven out by me and gone to strangers, but to have gone invited to your own friends. […] You will go at last where your unbridled and mad desire has been long hurrying you. And this causes you no grief; but an incredible pleasure. Nature has formed you, desire has trained you, fortune has preserved you for this insanity. Not only did you never desire quiet, but you never even desired any war but a criminal one; you have collected a baud of profligates and worthless men, abandoned not only by all fortune but even by hope. […] Know that I may remove and avert, O conscript fathers, any in the least reasonable complaint from myself; listen, I beseech you, carefully to what I say, and lay it up in your inmost hearts and minds. In truth, if my country, which is far dearer to me than my life – if all Italy – if the whole republic were to address me, “Marcus Tullius, what are you doing? will you permit that man to depart whom you have ascertained to be an enemy? whom you see ready to become the general of the war? whom you know to be expected in the camp of the enemy as their chief; the author of all this wickedness, the head of the conspiracy, the instigator of the slaves and abandoned citizens, so that he shall seem not driven out of the city by you, but let loose by you against the city? […] Do you fear odium with posterity? You are showing fine gratitude to the Roman people which has raised you, a man known only by your own actions, of no ancestral renown, through all the degrees of honour at so early an age to the very highest office, if from fear of unpopularity or of any danger you neglect the safety of your fellow-citizens. But if you have a fear of unpopularity, is that arising from the imputation of vigour and boldness, or that arising from that of inactivity and indecision most to be feared? When Italy is laid waste by war, when cities are attacked and houses in flames, do you not think that you will be then consumed by a perfect conflagration of hatred?” To this holy address of the republic, and to the feelings of those men who entertain the same opinion, I will make this short answer: – If, O conscript fathers, I thought it best that Catiline should be punished with death, I would not have given the space of one hour to this gladiator to live in. If, forsooth, those excellent men and most illustrious cities not only did not pollute themselves, but even glorified themselves by the blood of Saturninus, and the Gracchi, and Flaccus, and many others of old time, surely I had no cause to fear lest for slaying this parricidal murderer of the citizens any unpopularity should accrue to me with posterity. And if it did threaten me to ever so great a degree, yet I have always been of the disposition to think unpopularity earned by virtue and glory, not unpopularity. Though there are some men in this body who either do not see what threatens, or dissemble what they do see; who have fed the hope of Catiline by mild sentiments, and have strengthened the rising conspiracy by not believing it; influenced by whose authority many, and they not wicked, but only ignorant, if I punished him would say that I had

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acted cruelly and tyrannically. But I know that if he arrives at the camp of Manlius to which he is going, there will be no one so stupid as not to see that there has been a conspiracy; no one so hardened as not to confess it. But if this man alone were put to death, I know that this disease of the republic would be only checked for a while, not eradicated forever. But if he banishes himself; and takes with him all his friends, and collects at one point all the ruined men from every quarter, then not only will this full-grown plague of the republic be extinguished and eradicated, but also the root and seed of all future evils. We have now for a long time, O conscript fathers, lived among these dangers and machinations of conspiracy; but somehow or other, the ripeness of all wickedness, and of this long-standing madness and audacity, has come to a head at the time of my consulship. But if this man alone is removed from this piratical crew, we may appear, perhaps, for a short time relieved from fear and anxiety, but the danger will settle down and lie hid in the veins and bowels of the republic. As it often happens that men afflicted with a severe disease, when they are tortured with heat and fever, if they drink cold water, seem at first to be relieved, but afterwards suffer more and more severely; so this disease which is in the republic, if relieved by the punishment of this man, will only get worse and worse, as the rest will be still alive. Wherefore, O conscript fathers, let the worthless be gone, – let them separate themselves from the good, – let them collect in one place, – let them, as I have often said before, be separated from us by a wall; let them cease to plot against the consul in his own house, – to surround the tribunal of the city praetor, – to besiege the senate-house with swords, – to prepare brands and torches to burn the city; let it, in short, be written on the brow of every citizen, what are his sentiments about the republic. I promise you this, O conscript fathers, that there shall be so much diligence in us the consuls, so much authority in you, so much virtue in the Roman knights, so much unanimity in all good men, that you shall see everything made plain and manifest by the departure of Catiline, – everything checked and punished. With these omens, O Catiline, be gone to your impious and nefarious war, to the great safety of the republic, to your own misfortune and injury, and to the destruction of those who have joined themselves to you in every wickedness and atrocity. Then do you, O Jupiter, who were consecrated by Romulus with the same auspices as this city, whom we rightly call the stay of this city and empire, repel this man and his companions from your altars and from the other temples, – from the houses and walls of the city, – from the lives and fortunes of all the citizens; and overwhelm all the enemies of good men, the foes of the republic, the robbers of Italy, men bound together by a treaty and infamous alliance of crimes, dead and alive, with eternal punishments.

4.  Thomas More, Defense Speech (July 1, 1535) 17 Sir Thomas More (1478–1535) served as High Chancellor of England (1529–32). He was put on trial after he refused to pledge allegiance to Henry VIII as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Convicted of treason, More was beheaded five days later at Tower Hill, London. 17

Source: William Roper, The Life of Sir Thomas More, in The Workes of Sir Thomas More (London, 1557).

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If I were a man, my lords, that did not regard an oath, I need not, as it is well known, in this place, at this time, nor in this case to stand as an accused person. And if this oath of yours, Master Rich, be true, then pray I that I may never see God in the face, which I would not say, were it otherwise to win the whole world. In good faith, Master Rich, I am sorrier for your perjury than for mine own peril, and you shall understand that neither I nor any man else to my knowledge ever took you to be a man of such credit in any matter of importance I or any other would at any time vouchsafe to communicate with you. And I, as you know, of no small while have been acquainted with you and your conversation, who have known you from your youth hitherto, for we long dwelled together in one parish. Whereas yourself can tell (I am sorry you compel me to say) you were esteemed very light of tongue, a great dicer, and of no commendable fame. And so in your house at the Temple, where hath been your chief bringing up, were you likewise accounted. Can it therefore seem likely to your honorable lordships, that I would, in so weighty a cause, so unadvisedly overshoot myself as to trust Master Rich, a man of men always reputed for one of little truth, as your lordships have heard, so far above my sovereign lord the king, or any of his noble counselors, that I would unto him utter the secrets of my conscience touching the king’s supremacy, the special point and only mark at my hands so long sought for? A thing which I never did, nor ever would, after the statute thereof made, reveal unto the King’s Highness himself or to any of his honorable counselors, as it is not unknown to your honors, at sundry and several times, sent from His Grace’s own person unto the Tower unto me for none other purpose. Can this in your judgment, my lords, seem likely to be true? And if I had so done, indeed, my lords, as Master Rich hath sworn, seeing it was spoken but in familiar, secret talk, nothing affirming, and only in putting of cases, without other displeasant circumstances, it cannot justly be taken to be spoken maliciously; and where there is no malice there can be no offense. And over this I can never think, my lords, that so many worthy bishops, so many noble personages, and many other worshipful, virtuous, wise, and well-learned men as at the making of that law were in Parliament assembled, ever meant to have any man punished by death in whom there could be found no malice, taking malitia pro malevolentia: for if malitia be generally taken for sin, no man is there that can excuse himself. Quia si dixerimus quod peccatum non habemus, nosmetipsos seducimus, et veritas in nobis non est. [If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us: 1 John 1:8.] And only this word “maliciously” is in the statute material, as this term “forcibly” is in the statute of forcible entries, by which statute if a man enter peaceably, and put not his adversary out “forcibly,” it is no offense, but if he put him out “forcibly,” then by that statute it is an offense, and so shall be punished by this term “forcibly.” Besides this, the manifold goodness of the King’s Highness himself, that hath been so many ways my singular good lord and gracious sovereign, and that hath so dearly loved and trusted me, even at my first coming into his noble service, with the dignity of his honorable privy council, vouchsafing to admit me, and to offices of great credit and worship most liberally advanced me; and finally with the weighty room of His Grace’s higher chancellor, the like whereof he never did to temporal man before, next to his own royal person the highest office in this whole realm, so far above my qualities or merits and meet therefore of his own incomparable benignity honored and exalted me, by the space of twenty years or more, showing his continual favors towards me, and

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(until, at mine own poor suit it pleased His Highness, giving me license with His Majesty’s favor to bestow the residue of my life wholly for the provision of my soul in the service of God, and of his special goodness thereof to discharge and unburden me) most benignly heaped honors continually more and more upon me; all this His Highness’s goodness, I say, so long thus bountifully extended towards me, were in my mind, my lords, matter sufficient to convince this slanderous surmise by this man so wrongfully imagined against me. [After the jury has found him guilty, More reminds the Lord Chancellor that it is customary prior to the judgment to ask the prisoner why judgment should not be given against him. The Lord Chancellor obliges him by posing the question, to which More responds:] Forasmuch, my lord, as this indictment is grounded upon an act of Parliament directly oppugnant to the laws of God and his holy church, the supreme government of which, or of any part thereof, may no temporal prince presume by any law to take upon him, as rightfully belonging to the See of Rome, a spiritual preeminence by the mouth of our Savior himself, personally present upon the earth, to Saint Peter and his successors, bishops of the same see, by special prerogative granted; it is therefore in law amongst Christian men, insufficient to charge any Christian man. [The commissioners ask More whether he has anything else to say in his defense, to which More responds:] More have I not to say, my lords, but that like as the blessed apostle Saint Paul, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, was present and consented to the death of Saint Stephen, and kept their clothes that stoned him to death, and yet be they now both twain holy saints in heaven, and shall continue there friends forever: so I verily trust and shall therefore right heartily pray, that though your lordships have now in earth been judges to my condemnation, we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together to our everlasting salvation.

5.  Emile Zola, “The Dreyfus Affair” (excerpts) (January 13, 1898) 18 French novelist Emile Zola (1840–1902), famous for his realistic portrayals of ordinary French citizens, in works such as Germinal (1885), was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and again in 1902. He was charged with libel by the Army for publishing his open letter, “J’accuse,” in defense of the falsely accused officer Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew (1859–1935). The following is from Zola’s speech to the jury at his trial for libel. Not expecting to be acquitted himself, he hoped his speech would force a new trial for Dreyfus. Zola fled to England after he was found guilty, sentenced to one year in prison, and fined 3,000 francs. […] You have heard the witnesses; you are about to hear my counsel, who will tell you the true story, the story that maddens everybody and that everybody knows. I am, therefore, at my ease. You have the truth at last, and it will do its work. M. Méline 18

Source: David Josiah Brewer, World’s Best Orations from the Earliest Period to the Present Time (St. Louis, mi: Kaiser, 1900).

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thought to dictate your decision by entrusting to you the honor of the army. And it is in the name of the honor of the army that I too appeal to your justice.… You know the legend, which has grown up: Dreyfus was condemned justly and legally by seven infallible officers, whom it is impossible even to suspect of a blunder without insulting the whole army. Dreyfus expiates in merited torments his abominable crime, and as he is a Jew, a Jewish syndicate is formed, an international sans patrie syndicate disposing of hundreds of millions, the object of which is to save the traitor at any price, even by the most shameless intrigues. And thereupon this syndicate began to heap crime on crime, buying consciences, precipitating France into a disastrous tumult, resolved on selling her to the enemy, willing even to drive all Europe into a general war rather than renounce its terrible plan. It is very simple, nay childish, if not imbecile. But it is with this poisoned bread that the unclean press has been nourishing our poor people now for months. And it is not surprising if we are witnessing a dangerous crisis; for when folly and lies are thus sown broadcast, you necessarily reap insanity. Gentlemen, I would not insult you by supposing that you have yourselves been duped by this nursery tale. I know you; I know who you are. You are the heart and the reason of Paris, of my great Paris, where I was born, which I love with an infinite tenderness, which I have been studying and writing of now for forty years. And I know likewise what is now passing in your brains; for, before coming to sit here as defendant, I sat there on the bench where you are now. You represent there the average opinion; you try to illustrate prudence and justice in the mass. Soon I shall be in thought with you in the room where you deliberate, and I am convinced that your effort will be to safeguard your interests as citizens, which are, of course, the interests of the whole nation. You may make a mistake, but you will do so in the thought that while securing your own weal you are securing the weal of all. I see you at your homes at evening under the lamp; I hear you talk with your friends; I accompany you into your factories and shops. You are all workers – some tradesmen, others manufacturers, some professional men; and your very legitimate anxiety is the deplorable state into which business has fallen. Everywhere the present crisis threatens to become a disaster. The receipts fall off; transactions become more and more difficult. So that the idea which you have brought here, the thought which I read in your countenances, is that there has been enough of this and that it must be ended. You have not gone the length of saying, like many, “What matters it that an innocent man is at the Ile du Diable [Devil’s Island, the penal colony where Dreyfus was being held]? Is the interest of a single man worth this disturbing a great country?” But you say, nevertheless, that the agitation, which we are carrying on, we who hunger for truth and justice, costs too dearly! And if you condemn me, gentlemen, it is that thought which will be at the bottom of your verdict. You desire tranquility for your homes, you wish for the revival of business, and you may think that by punishing me you will stop a campaign which is injurious to the interests of France. Well, gentlemen, if that is your idea, you are entirely mistaken. Do me the honor of believing that I am not defending my liberty. By punishing me you would only magnify me. Whoever suffers for truth and justice becomes august and sacred. Look at me. Have I the look of a hireling, of a liar, and a traitor? Why should I be playing a part? I have behind me neither political ambition nor sectarian passion. I am a free writer, who has given his life to labor; who tomorrow will go back to the ranks and resume his interrupted task. […]

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Do you not understand now that what the nation is dying of is the darkness in which there is such an obstinate determination to leave her? The blunders of those in authority are being heaped upon those of others; one lie necessitates another, so that the mass is becoming formidable. A judicial blunder was committed, and then to hide it, it has been necessary to commit every day fresh crimes against good sense and equity! The condemnation of an innocent man has involved the acquittal of a guilty man, and now today you are asked in turn to condemn me because I have cried out in my anguish on beholding our country embarked on this terrible course. Condemn me, then! But it will be one more error added to the others – a fault the burden of which you will hear in history. And my condemnation, instead of restoring the peace for which you long, and which we all of us desire, will be only a fresh seed of passion and disorder. The cup, I tell you, is full; do not make it run over! Why do you not judge justly the terrible crisis through which the country is passing? They say that we are the authors of the scandal, that we who are lovers of truth and justice are leading the nation astray and urging it to violence. Surely this is a mockery! […] The Dreyfus case, gentlemen, has now become a very small affair. It is lost in view of the formidable questions to which it has given rise. There is no longer a Dreyfus case. The question now is whether France is still the France of the rights of man, the France which gave freedom to the world, and ought to give it justice. Are we still the most noble, the most fraternal, the most generous of nations? Shall we preserve our reputation in Europe for justice and humanity? Are not all the victories that we have won called in question? Open your eyes, and understand that, to be in such confusion, the French soul must have been stirred to its depths in face of a terrible danger. A nation cannot be thus moved without imperiling its moral existence. This is an exceptionally serious hour; the safety of the nation is at stake. When you have understood that, gentlemen, you will feel that but one remedy is possible – to tell the truth, to do justice. Anything that keeps back the light, anything that adds darkness to darkness, will only prolong and aggravate the crisis. The duty of good citizens, of all who feel it to be imperatively necessary to put an end to this matter, is to demand broad daylight.… Alas! gentlemen, like so many others, you expect the thunderbolt to descend from heaven in proof of the innocence of Dreyfus. Truth does not come thus. It requires research and knowledge. We know well where the truth is, or where it might be found. But we dream of that only in the recesses of our souls, and we feel patriotic anguish lest we expose ourselves to the danger of having this proof someday cast in our face after having involved the honor of the army in a falsehood. I wish also to declare positively that, though, in the official notice of our list of witnesses, we included certain ambassadors, we had decided in advance not to call them. Our boldness has provoked smiles. But I do not think that there was any real smiling in our foreign office, for there they must have understood! We intended to say to those who know the whole truth that we also know it. This truth is gossiped about at the embassies; tomorrow it will be known to all, and, if it is now impossible for us to seek it where it is concealed by official red tape, the government which is not ignorant – the government which is convinced as we are – of the innocence of Dreyfus, will be able, whenever it likes and without risk, to find witnesses who will demonstrate everything. Dreyfus is innocent. I swear it! I stake my life on it – my honor! At this solemn moment, in the presence of this tribunal which is the representative of human jus-

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tice, before you, gentlemen, who are the very incarnation of the country, before the whole of France, before the whole world, I swear that Dreyfus is innocent. By my forty years of work, by the authority that this toil may have given me, I swear that Dreyfus is innocent. By all I have now, by the name I have made for myself, by my works which have helped for the expansion of French literature, I swear that Dreyfus is innocent. May all that melt away, may my works perish if Dreyfus be not innocent! He is innocent. All seems against me – the two chambers, the civil authority, the most widely circulated journals, the public opinion which they have poisoned. And I have for me only an ideal of truth and justice. But I am quite calm; I shall conquer. I was determined that my country should not remain the victim of lies and injustice. I may be condemned here. The day will come when France will thank me for having helped to save her honor.

6.  Clarence S. Darrow, Closing Argument in the Leopold and Loeb Case (excerpts) (August 22 and 23, 1924) 19 Famed American attorney Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) here speaks on behalf of his clients Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb at a sensational criminal trial in Chicago. Wealthy students at the University of Chicago, Leopold and Loeb kidnapped and murdered a fourteen-year-old boy, Bobby Franks, apparently for no other reason than to show their superior intelligence in getting away with a “perfect murder.” The purpose of Darrow’s masterful speech was not to have the defendants found not guilty but rather to have them avoid death by hanging, and in the event Leopold and Loeb were given life sentences. Loeb wound up being murdered by a fellow prisoner in 1936, while Leopold was paroled in 1958 and died in Puerto Rico in 1971. It has been almost three months since I first assumed the great responsibility that has devolved upon me and my associates in this case; and I am willing to confess that it has been three months of perplexity and anxiety – a trouble which I would gladly have been spared excepting for my feelings of affection toward some of the members of one of these families. It is a responsibility that is almost too great for anyone to assume that has devolved upon us. But we lawyers can no more choose than the court can choose. Your honor, our anxiety over this case has not been due to the facts that are connected with this most unfortunate affair, but to the almost unheard-of publicity; to the fact that newspapers all over this country have been giving it space such as they have almost never given a case before; the fact that day after day the people of Chicago have been regaled with stories of all sorts about it, until almost every person has formed an opinion. And when the public is interested and want a punishment, no matter what the offense is, great or small, they only think of one punishment and that is death. […] 19

Source: Attorney Clarence Darrow’s Plea for Mercy and Prosecutor Robert E. Crowe’s Demand for the Death Penalty in the Loeb-Leopold Case (Chicago, il: Wilson, 1924).

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I insist, your honor, that had this been the case of two boys of this age unconnected with families who are supposed to have great wealth, that there is not a state’s attorney in Illinois who would not at once have consented to a plea of guilty and a punishment in the penitentiary for life. Not one. No lawyer could have justified it. No prosecution could have justified it. We could have come into this court without evidence, without argument, with nothing, and this court would have given to us what every judge in the city of Chicago has given to every boy in the city of Chicago since the first capital case was tried. And we would have had no contest. We are here with the lives of two boys imperiled, with the public aroused. For what? Because, unfortunately, their parents have money. Nothing else. I told your honor in the beginning that never had there been a case in Chicago, where on a plea of guilty a boy under 21 had been sentenced to death. I will raise that age and say never has there been a case where a human being under the age of 28 or 30 has been sentenced to death. And I think I am safe in saying, although I have not examined all the records and could not, but I think I am safe in saying that never has there been such a case in the state of Illinois. And yet this court is urged, aye, threatened, that he must hang two boys contrary to the precedents, contrary to the acts of every judge who ever held court in this state. Why? Tell me what public necessity there is for this. Why need the state’s attorney ask for something that was never asked before? Why need a judge be urged by every argument, moderate and immoderate, to hang two boys in the face of every precedent in Illinois and in the face of the progress of the last fifty – at least twenty-five – years? [Darrow proceeds to give historical and legal reasons why the death penalty is grossly inappropriate in this case.] And your honor, I must for a moment criticize the arguments that have preceded me. I can read to you in a minute my friend Marshall’s argument, barring Blackstone, and I will simply call your attention to what he left out. But the rest of his arguments and the rest of brother Savage’s argument, I can sum up in a minute: Cruel, dastardly, premeditated, fiendish, abandoned and malignant heart – that sounds like a cancer – cowardly, coldblooded. Now that is what I have listened to for three days against two minors, two children, who could not sign a note or make a deed. I have listened to that for three days. Cowardly? Well, I don’t know. Let me tell you something that I think is cowardly, whether their acts were or not. Here is Dickie Loeb, and they object to anybody’s calling him Dickie although everybody did, but they think they can hang him easier if his name is Richard, so we will call him Richard. Eighteen years old at the time. Here is Nathan Leopold, Jr., nineteen. Here are three officers watching them. They are led out and in this jail across the bridge waiting to be hanged. Not a chance to get away. Handcuffed when they get out. Not a chance. Penned like a rat in a trap and for some lawyer with physiological eloquence to wave his fist in front of his face and shout cowardly does not appeal to me as a brave act. It does not commend itself to me as a brave act or as a proper thing for a state’s attorney or his assistant, for even defendants not yet hanged have some rights with an official. Cold-blooded? But I don’t know, your honor. I will discuss that a little later, whether it was cold-blooded or not. Cold-blooded? Why? Because they planned, and schemed, and arranged, and fixed? Yes. But here are the officers of justice, so-called, with all of the power of the state, with all the influence of the press, to fan this community into

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a frenzy of hate with all of that, who for months have been planning, and scheming, and contriving, and working to take these two boys’ lives. You may stand them up on a scaffold, on a trap door, and choke them to death, but that act would be infinitely more cold-blooded whether it was justified or not, than any act that these boys have committed or can commit. Cold-blooded! Let the state, who is so anxious to take these boys’ lives, set an example in consideration – kindheartedness and tenderness – before they call my clients cold-blooded. […] I want to give some attention to this cold-blooded murder, your honor. Was it a cold-blooded murder? Was it the most terrible murder that ever happened in the state of Illinois? Was it the most dastardly act in the annals of crime? No. I insist, your honor, that under all fair rules and measurements, this was one of the least dastardly and cruel of any that I have known anything about. […] But there are degrees, and if I might be permitted to make my own rules I would say if I were estimating what was the most cruel murder I might first consider the victim, as to his suffering. Now, probably the state would not take that rule. They would say the one that had the most attention in the newspapers. In that way they have got me beat at the start. But I would say the first thing to consider was the degree of pain, to the victim. Poor little Bobby Franks suffered very little. This is no excuse for his killing. If to hang these two boys would bring him back to life, I would say let them go, and I believe their parents would say it, too. But, “the moving finger writes, and having writ moves on; nor all your piety nor wit can lure it back to cancel half a line or change one word of it.”20 Robert Franks is dead, and we cannot change that. It was all over in fifteen minutes after he got into the car, and he probably never knew it or thought of it. […] What about these boys, the second cause or the second thing that would settle whether it was cruel or not? Mr. Marshall [a prosecutor] read case after case of murder and he said: “Why, those cases don’t compare with yours. Yours is worse.” Worse, why? What were those cases? […] This is a senseless, useless, purposeless, motiveless act of two boys. Now, let me see if I can prove it. There was not a particle of hate, there was not a grain of malice, there was not an opportunity to be cruel except as death is cruel – and death is cruel. [Darrow proceeds to argue that money was not in fact a motive in the kidnapping of the victim, as alleged by the prosecution.] That is what this case rests on [namely, the alleged motive of money]. It could not stand up a minute without motive. Without it, it was the senseless act of immature and diseased children, as it was, a senseless act of children, wandering around in the dark and moved by some emotion, that we still perhaps have not the knowledge of life to thoroughly understand. […] But I do not ask mercy for these boys. Your honor may be as strict in the enforcement of the law as you please, and you cannot hang these boys. You can only hang them because back of the law and back of justice and back of the common instincts of man, and back of the human feeling for the young, is the hoarse voice of the mob which says, “Hang them.” [Darrow then outlines Illinois law, which allows for hanging as but one of three possible punishments for murder.] There is neither cruelty to the deceased, beyond taking his life – which is such – nor was there any depth of guilt and depravity on the part of the defendants, for it was a truly motiveless act, without the slightest feeling of hatred or revenge, done by a couple of children for no reason whatever. 20

From Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat.

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But, your honor, we have gone further than that, and we have sought to show you, as I think we have, the condition of these boys’ minds. Of course, it is not an easy job to ascertain the condition of another person’s mind. These experts in the main have told you that it is impossible to ascertain what the mind is, to start with; to tell how it acts. I will refer later, your honor, to the purpose of asking for the ransom which has been clearly testified to here. I simply so far wish to show that the money had nothing whatever to do with it. The inadequacy of it all, the risk taken for nothing, the utter lack of need, the senselessness of it all, shows that it had nothing whatever to do with this crime, and that the reason is the reason that has been given by the boys. Now I was about to say that it needs no expert, it needs nothing but a bare recitation of these facts, and a fair consideration of them, to convince any human being that this act was the act of diseased brains. […] That they were intelligent and sane and sound and reasoning is unthinkable. Let me call your honor’s attention to another thing. Why did they kill little Bobby Franks? Not for money; not for spite; not for hate. They killed him as they might kill a spider or a fly – for the experience. They killed him because they were made that way. Because somewhere in the infinite processes that go to the making up of the boy or the man something slipped, and these unfortunate lads sit here hated, despised, outcasts, and the community shouting for their blood. Are they to blame for it? There is not any man on earth can mention any purpose for it all or any reason for it all. It is one of those things that happened; and it calls not for hate but for kindness, for charity, for consideration. […] And do you think you can cure it by hanging these two? Do you think you can cure the hatreds and the maladjustments of the world by hanging them? You simply show your ignorance and your hate when you say it. You may here and there cure hatred with love and understanding, but you can only add fuel to the flames by hating in return. What is my friend’s idea of justice? He says to this court, whom he says he respects – and I believe he does – your honor, who sits here patiently, holding the lives of these two boys in your hands: “Give them the same mercy that they gave to Bobby Franks.” Is that the law? Is that justice? Is this what a court should do? Is this what a state’s attorney should do? For God’s sake, if the state in which I live is not kinder, more human, more considerate, more intelligent than the mad act of these two mad boys, I am sorry I have lived so long. I am sorry for these fathers and these mothers. The mother who looks into the blue eyes of her little babe cannot help but wonder what will be the end of this child, whether it will be crowned with the greatest promises which her mind can imagine or whether he may meet death from the gallows. All she can do is to raise him with care, to watch over him tenderly, to meet life with hope and trust and confidence, and to leave the rest with fate. […] I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man. I feel that I ought to apologize for the length of time I have taken. This may not be as important as I think it is, and I am sure I do not need to tell this court, or to tell my friend Mr. Crowe, that I would fight just as hard for the poor as for the rich.

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If I should succeed in saving these boys’ lives and do nothing for the progress of the law, I should feel sad, indeed. If I can succeed, my greatest award and my greatest hope and my greatest compensation will be that I have done something for the tens of thousands of other boys, for the other unfortunates who must tread the same way that these poor youths have trod, that I have done something to help human understanding, to temper justice with mercy, to overcome hate with love. I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet, Omar Khayyam. It appealed to me as the highest that I can envision. I wish it was in my heart and I wish it was in the heart of all, and I can end no better than to quote what he said: “So I be written in the Book of Love, I do not care about that Book above. Erase my name or write it as you will, So I be written in the Book of Love.”

7.  William Jennings Bryan, Closing Argument in the Scopes “Monkey” Trial (excerpts) (July 21, 1925) 21 William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925), one of the most influential figures of the Progressive Era, ran three times as the Democratic nominee for President (1896, 1900, and 1908). His populist bent earned him the nickname “The Great Commoner.” He represented the State of Tennessee in its prosecution of a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, for violating the Butler Act in teaching evolution and questioning the biblical account of the origin of human beings. Mr. Scopes was chosen as part of a recruitment effort by the American Civil Liberty Union to test the Butler Act. Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of the trial is that Bryan himself was called as a witness in his capacity as a biblical expert and his religious beliefs were cross-examined by Clarence Darrow, the attorney for the defense. Fearing for the safety of Mr. Darrow, the judge cancelled the plan for the cross-examination of Darrow by Bryan and expunged from the records the testimony of Bryan. In order to create a basis for an appeal, Darrow asked the judge to find the defendant guilty and both parties agreed to forgo the closing arguments. Hence, Bryan’s statement was never delivered before the court. Scopes was found guilty and fined, although in the end he did not have to pay it. May it please the Court, and Gentlemen of the Jury: […] Let us now separate the issues from the misrepresentations, intentional or unintentional, that have obscured both the letter and the purpose of the law. This is not an interference with freedom of conscience. A teacher can think as he pleases and worship God as he likes, or refuse to worship God at all. He can believe in the Bible or discard it; he can accept Christ or reject Him. This law places no obligations or restraints upon him. And so with freedom of speech, he can, so long as he acts as an individual, say 21

Source: The Last Message of William Jennings Bryan (Dayton: Bryan University Memorial Association, 1929).

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anything he likes on any subject. This law does not violate any rights guaranteed by any Constitution to any individual. It deals with the defendant, not as an individual, but as an employee, official or public servant, paid by the State, and therefore under instructions from the State. […] It need hardly be added that this law did not have its origin in bigotry. It is not trying to force any form of religion on anybody. The majority is not trying to establish a religion or to teach it – it is trying to protect itself from the effort of an insolent minority to force irreligion upon the children under the guise of teaching science. What right has a little irresponsible oligarchy of self-styled “intellectuals” to demand control of the schools of the United States; in which twenty-five millions of children are being educated at an annual expense of nearly two billions of dollars? Christians must in every State of the Union build their own colleges in which to teach Christianity; it is duly simple justice that atheists, agnostics, and unbelievers should build their own colleges if they want to teach their own religious views or attack the religious views of others. The statute is brief and free from ambiguity. It prohibits the teaching, in the public schools, of “any theory that denies the story of divine creation as taught in the Bible,” and teaches, instead, that man descended from a lower order of animals. The first sentence sets forth the purpose of those who passed the law. They forbid the teaching of any evolutionary theory that disputes the Bible record of man’s creation and, [to] make sure that there shall be no misunderstanding, they place their own interpretation on their language and specifically forbid the teaching of any theory that makes man a descendant of any lower form of life. The evidence shows that [the] defendant taught, in his own language as well as from a book outlining the theory, that man descended from lower forms of life. Howard Morgan’s testimony gives us a definition of evolution that will become known throughout the world as this case is discussed. Howard, a 14-year-old boy, has translated the words of the teacher and the textbook into language that even a child can understand. As he recollects it, the defendant said: “A little germ of one cell organism was formed in the sea; this kept evolving until it got to be a pretty good sized animal, then came on to be a land animal, and it kept evolving, and from this was man.” There is no room for difference of opinion here, and there is no need of expert testimony. Here are the facts, corroborated by another student, Harry Shelton, and admitted to be true by counsel for defense. Mr. White, Superintendent of Schools, testified to the use of Hunter’s “Civic Biology,” to the fact that the defendant not only admitted teaching evolution, but without violating the law. Mr. Robinson, the Chairman of the School Board, corroborated the testimony of Superintendent White in regard to the defendant’s admissions and declarations. These are the facts. They are sufficient and undisputed; a verdict of guilty must follow. But the importance of this case requires more. The facts and arguments presented to you must not only convince you of the justice of conviction in this case, but, while not necessary to a verdict of guilty, they should convince you of the righteousness of the purpose of the people of the State in the enactment of this law. The State must speak through you to the outside world and repel the aspersions cast by the counsel for the defense upon the intelligence and the enlightenment of the citizens of Tennessee. The people of this State have a high appreciation of the value of education. The State Constitution testifies to that in its demand that education shall be fostered and that science and literature shall be cherished. The continuing and increasing appro-

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priations for public instruction furnish abundant proof that Tennessee places a just estimate upon the learning that is secured in its schools. Religion is not hostile to learning; Christianity has been the greatest patron learning has ever had. But Christians know that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” now just as it has been in the past, and they therefore oppose the teaching of guesses that encourage godlessness among the students. Neither does Tennessee undervalue the service rendered by science. The Christian men and women of Tennessee know how deeply mankind is indebted to science for benefits conferred by the discovery of the laws of nature and by the designing of machinery for the utilization of these laws. Give science a fact and it is not only invincible, but it is of incalculable service to man. […] Christianity welcomes truth from whatever source it comes and is not afraid that any real truth from any source can interfere with the divine truth that comes by inspiration from God Himself. It is not scientific truth to which Christians object, for true science is classified knowledge, and nothing therefore can be scientific unless it is true. Evolution is not truth; it is merely a hypothesis – it is millions of guesses strung together. It had not been proven in the days of [Charles] Darwin – he expressed astonishment that with two or three million species it had been impossible to trace any species to any other species – it had not been proven in the days of [Thomas] Huxley, and it has not been proven up to today. It is less than four years ago that Professor Bateson came all the way from London to Canada to tell the American scientists that every effort to trace one species to another had failed – every one. He said he still had faith in evolution but had doubts about the origin of species. But of what value is evolution if it cannot explain the origin of species? While many scientists accept evolution as if it were a fact, they all admit, when questioned, that no explanation has been found as to how one species developed into another. […] It must be remembered that the law under consideration in this case does not prohibit the teaching of evolution up to the line that separates man from the lower form of animal life. The law might well have gone further than it does and prohibit the teaching of evolution in lower forms of life; the law is a very conservative statement of the people’s opposition to an anti-Biblical hypothesis. The defendant was not content to teach what the law permitted; he, for reasons of his own, persisted in teaching that which was forbidden for reasons entirely satisfactory to the lawmakers. […] The evolutionist does not undertake to tell us how protozoa, moved by Interior and resident forces, sent life up through all the various species, and cannot prove that there was actually any such compelling power at all. And yet the school children are asked to accept their guesses and build a philosophy of life upon them. If it were not so serious a matter, one might be tempted to speculate upon the various degrees of relationship that, according to evolutionists exist between man and other forms of life. It might require some very nice calculation to determine at what degree of relationship the killing of a relative ceases to be murder and the eating of one’s kin ceases to be cannibalism. But it is not a laughing matter when one considers that evolution not only offers no suggestions as to a Creator but tends to put the creative act so far away as to cast doubt upon creation itself. And, while it is shaking faith in God as a beginning, it is also creating doubt as to a heaven at the end of life. Evolutionists do not feel that it is incumbent upon them to show how life began or at what point in their long drawn out scheme of changing species man became endowed with hope and promise of immortal life. God

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may be a matter of indifference to the evolutionists, and a life beyond may have no charm for them, but the mass of mankind will continue to worship their Creator and continue to find comfort in the promise of their Savior that he has gone to prepare a place for them. Christ has made of death a narrow, star-lit strip between the companionship of yesterday and the reunion of tomorrow; evolution strikes out the stars and deepens the gloom that enshrouds the tomb. If the results of evolution were unimportant, one might require less proof in support of the hypothesis; but, before accepting a new philosophy of life built upon a materialistic foundation, we have reason to demand something more than guesses: “we may well suppose” is not a sufficient substitute for “thus saith the Lord.” [WJB proceeds to quote at length from Darwin’s Descent of Man.]

Indictment of Evolution Our first indictment against evolution is that it disputes the truth of the Bible account of man’s creation and shakes faith in the Bible as the word of God. This indictment we prove by comparing the processes described as evolutionary with the text of Genesis. It not only contradicts the Mosaic record as to the beginning of human life, but it disputes the Bible doctrine of reproduction according to kind – the greatest scientific principle known. Our second indictment is that the evolutionary hypothesis, carried to its logical conclusion, disputes every vital truth of the Bible. Its tendency, natural, if not inevitable, is to lead those who really accept it, first to agnosticism and then to atheism. Evolutionists attack the truth of the Bible, not openly at first, but by using weasel-words like “poetical,” “symbolical” and “allegorical” to suck the meaning out of the inspired record of man’s creation. [WJB quotes Darwin at length concerning the change in Darwin’s own religious beliefs away from Christianity toward agnosticism.] But there is one sentence upon which I reserved comment – it throws light upon this downward pathway. “Then arises the doubt, Can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?” Here is the explanation: He drags man down to the brute level, and then, judging man by brute standards, he questions whether man’s mind can be trusted to deal with “God and immortality”! How can any teacher tell his students that evolution does not tend to destroy his religious faith? How can an honest teacher conceal from his students the effect of evolution upon Darwin himself? And is it not stranger still that preachers who advocate evolution never speak of Darwin’s loss of faith, due to his belief in evolution? The parents of Tennessee have reason enough to fear the effect of evolution upon the minds of their children. Belief in evolution cannot bring to those who hold such a belief any compensation for the loss of faith in God, trust in the Bible, and belief in the supernatural character of Christ. It is belief in evolution that has caused so many scientists and so many Christians to reject the miracles of the Bible, and then give up, one after another, every vital truth of Christianity. They finally cease to pray and sunder the tie that binds them to their Heavenly Father. […] Shakespeare regards the robbing one of his good name as much more grave than the stealing of his purse. But we have a higher authority than Shakespeare to invoke in this connection. He who spake as never man spake thus describes the crimes that are committed against the young: “It is impossible but that offenses will come; but woe

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unto him through whom they come. It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and be cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones” [Luke 17:1–2]. […] And it must be remembered that we can measure the effect on only that part of life which is spent on earth; we have no way of calculating the effect on that infinite circle of life of which existence here is but a small arc. The soul is immortal and religion deals with the soul; the logical effect of the evolutionary hypothesis is to undermine religion and thus affect the soul. I recently received a list of questions that were to be discussed in a prominent Eastern school for women. The second question in the list read “‘is religion an obsolescent function that should be allowed to atrophy quietly without arousing the passionate prejudice of outworn superstition?” The real attack of evolution, it will be seen, is not upon orthodox Christianity, or even upon Christianity, but upon religion – the most basic fact in man’s existence and the most practical thing in life. Do bad doctrines corrupt the morals of students? We have a case in point, Mr. Darrow, one of the most distinguished criminal lawyers in our land, was engaged about a year ago in defending two rich men’s sons who were on trial for as dastardly a murder as was ever committed. The older one, “Babe” Leopold, was a brilliant student, 19 years old. He was an evolutionist and an atheist. He was also a follower of Nietzsche, whose books he had devoured and whose philosophy he had adopted. Mr. Darrow made a plea for him, based upon the influence that Nietzsche’s philosophy had exerted upon the boy’s mind. [WJB proceeds to quote from Darrow’s defense, which includes quotations from Friedrich Nietzsche.] In fairness to Mr. Darrow, I think I ought to quote two more paragraphs. After this bold attempt to excuse the student on the ground that he was transformed from a well-meaning youth into a murderer by the philosophy of an atheist, and on the further ground that this philosophy was in the libraries of all the colleges and discussed by the professors – some adopting the philosophy and some rejecting it – on these two grounds he denies that the boy should be held responsible for the taking of human life. He charges that the scholars in the universities were more responsible than the boy, and that the universities were more responsible than the boy, because they furnished such books to the students, and then he proceeds, to exonerate the universities and the scholars, leaving nobody responsible. Here is Mr. Darrow’s language: “Now, I do not want to be misunderstood about this. Even for the sake of saving the lives of my clients, I do not want to be dishonest and tell the Court something that I do not honestly think in this case. I do not think that the universities are to blame. I do not think they should be held responsible. I do think, however, that they are too large, and that they should keep a closer watch, if possible, upon the individual. “But you cannot destroy thought because, forsooth, some brain may be deranged by thought. It is the duty of the university, as I conceive it, to be the greatest storehouse of the wisdom of the ages, and to have its students come there and learn and choose. I have no doubt but what it has meant the death of many, but that we cannot help.” This is a damnable philosophy, and yet it is the flower that blooms on the stalk of evolution. Mr. Darrow thinks the universities are in duty bound to feed out this poisonous stuff to their students, and when the students become stupefied by it and commit murder neither they nor the universities are to blame. I am sure, your Honor, and gentlemen of the jury, that you agree with me when I protest against the adoption

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of any such a philosophy in the State of Tennessee. A criminal is not relieved from responsibility merely because he found Nietzsche’s philosophy in a library which ought not to contain it. […] This is the quintessence of evolution, distilled for us by one who follows that doctrine to its logical conclusion. Analyze this dogma of darkness and death. Evolutionists say that back in the twilight of life a beast, name and nature unknown, planted a murderous seed and that the impulse thus originated in that seed throbs forever in the blood of the brute’s descendants, inspiring killings innumerable, for which murderers are not responsible because coerced by a fate fixed by the laws of heredity. It is an insult to reason and shocks the heart. That doctrine is as deadly as leprosy; it may aid a lawyer in a criminal case, but it would, if generally adopted, destroy all sense of responsibility and menace the morals of the world. A brute, they say, can predestine a man to crime, and yet they deny that God incarnate in the flesh can release a human being from this bondage or save him from ancestral sins. No more repulsive doctrine was ever proclaimed by man. If all the biologists of the world teach this doctrine – as Mr. Darrow says they do – then may heaven defend the youth of our land from their impious babblings. Our third indictment against evolution is that it diverts attention from pressing problems of great importance to trifling speculations. While one evolutionist is trying to imagine what happened in the dim past, another is trying to pry open the door of the distant future. One recently grew eloquent over ancient worms and another predicted that 75,000 years hence everyone will be bald and toothless. Both those who endeavor to clothe our remote ancestors with hair and those who endeavor to remove the hair from the heads of our remote descendants ignore the present, with its imperative demands. […] Our fourth indictment against the evolutionary hypothesis is that, by paralyzing the hope of reform, it discourages those who labor for the improvement of man’s condition. Every upward-looking man or woman seeks to lift the level upon which mankind stands, and they trust that they will see beneficent changes during the brief span of their own lives. Evolution chills their enthusiasm by substituting eons for years. […] It is thus the intolerant and unrelenting enemy of the only process that can redeem society through the redemption of the individual. An evolutionist would never write such a story as the prodigal son; it contradicts the whole theory of evolution. The two sons inherited from the same parents and, through their parents, from the same ancestors, proximate and remote. And these sons were reared at the same fireside and were surrounded by the same environment during all the days of their youth, and yet they were different. If Mr. Darrow is correct in the theory applied to Loeb, namely, that his crime was due either to inheritance or to environment, how will he explain the difference between the elder brother and the wayward son? […] Can any Christian remain indifferent? Science needs religion, to direct its energies and to inspire with lofty purpose those who employ the forces that are unloosed by science. Evolution is at war with religion because religion is supernatural; it is therefore the relentless foe of Christianity, which is a revealed religion. Let us, then, hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Science is a magnificent material force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders or the control of

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storm-tossed human vessels. It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed, but some of its unproven hypotheses rob the ship of its compass and thus endanger its cargo. […] It is for the jury to determine whether this attack upon the Christian religion shall be permitted in the public schools of Tennessee by teachers employed by the State and paid out of the public treasury. This case is no longer local: the defendant ceases to play an important part. The case has assumed the proportions of a battle royal between unbelief that attempts to speak through so-called science and the defenders of the Christian faith speaking through the legislators of Tennessee. It is again a choice between God and Baal; it is also a renewal of the issue in Pilate’s court. In that historic trial – the greatest in history – force, impersonated by Pilate, occupied the throne. Behind it was the Roman Government, mistress of the world, and behind the Roman Government were the legions of Rome. Before Pilate stood Christ, the apostle of love. Force triumphed; they nailed Him to the tree and those who stood around mocked and jeered and said “He is dead.” But from that day the power of Caesar waned and the power of Christ increased. In a few centuries the Roman Government was gone and its legions forgotten; while the crucified and risen Lord has become the greatest fact in history and the growing Figure of all time. Again force and love meet face to face, and the question, “What shall I do with Jesus?” must be answered. A bloody, brutal doctrine – evolution – demands, as the rabble did 1,900 years ago, that He be crucified. That cannot be the answer of this jury, representing a Christian state and sworn to uphold the laws of Tennessee. Your answer will be heard throughout the world; it is eagerly awaited by a praying multitude. If the law is nullified, there will be rejoicing wherever God is repudiated, the Saviour scoffed at and the Bible ridiculed. Every unbeliever of every kind and degree will be happy. If, on the other hand, the law is upheld and the religion of the school children protected, millions of Christians will call you blessed and, with hearts full of gratitude to God, will sing again that grand old song of triumph: Faith of our fathers, living still, In spite of dungeon, fire and sword; O, how our hearts beat high with joy, Whene’er we hear that glorious word; Faith of our fathers – holy faith – We will be true to thee till death!

8.  Nelson Mandela, “I am Prepared to Die” (excerpts) (April 20, 1964) 22 Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) was sentenced to life imprisonment for his actions against racial apartheid in South Africa, and subsequent to his release in 1990 he served as the first President (1994–99) of the post-apartheid era. Mandela gave 22

Source: Nelson Mandela Foundation, Mandela_Speech_from_the_Dock_2.pdf.

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this speech from the docket at the Rivonia Trial in Johannesburg, which began on October 9, 1963 and concluded on June 12, 1964. Mandela and most of his co-defendants in the African National Congress (ANC) were found guilty. I am the First Accused. […] At the outset, I want to say that the suggestion made by the State in its opening that the struggle in South Africa is under the influence of foreigners or communists is wholly incorrect. I have done whatever I did, both as an individual and as a leader of my people, because of my experience in South Africa and my own proudly felt African background, and not because of what any outsider might have said. In my youth in the Transkei I listened to the elders of my tribe telling stories of the old days. Amongst the tales they related to me were those of wars fought by our ancestors in defense of the fatherland. […] This is what has motivated me in all that I have done in relation to the charges made against me in this case. Having said this, I must deal immediately and at some length with the question of violence. Some of the things so far told to the Court are true and some are untrue. I do not, however, deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness, nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation, and oppression of my people by the Whites. I admit immediately that I was one of the persons who helped to form Umkhonto we Sizwe, and that I played a prominent role in its affairs until I was arrested in August 1962. In the statement which I am about to make I shall correct certain false impressions which have been created by State witnesses. […] I have already mentioned that I was one of the persons who helped to form Umkhonto. I, and the others who started the organization, did so for two reasons. Firstly, we believed that as a result of Government policy, violence by the African people had become inevitable, and that unless responsible leadership was given to canalize and control the feelings of our people, there would be outbreaks of terrorism which would produce an intensity of bitterness and hostility between the various races of this country which is not produced even by war. Secondly, we felt that without violence there would be no way open to the African people to succeed in their struggle against the principle of white supremacy. All lawful modes of expressing opposition to this principle had been closed by legislation, and we were placed in a position in which we had either to accept a permanent state of inferiority, or to defy the Government. We chose to defy the law. We first broke the law in a way which avoided any recourse to violence; when this form was legislated against, and then the Government resorted to a show of force to crush opposition to its policies, only then did we decide to answer violence with violence. But the violence which we chose to adopt was not terrorism. We who formed Umkhonto were all members of the African National Congress, and had behind us the ANC tradition of non-violence and negotiation as a means of solving political disputes. We believe that South Africa belongs to all the people who live in it, and not to one group, be it black or white. We did not want an interracial war, and tried to avoid it to the last minute. If the Court is in doubt about this, it will be seen that the whole history of our organization bears out what I have said, and what I will subsequently say, when I describe the tactics which Umkhonto decided to adopt. […]

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In 1960 there was the shooting at Sharpeville, which resulted in the proclamation of a state of emergency and the declaration of the ANC as an unlawful organization. My colleagues and I, after careful consideration, decided that we would not obey this decree. The African people were not part of the Government and did not make the laws by which they were governed. We believed in the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that “the will of the people shall be the basis of authority of the Government,” and for us to accept the banning was equivalent to accepting the silencing of the Africans for all time. The ANC refused to dissolve, but instead went underground. […] I must return to June 1961. What were we, the leaders of our people, to do? Were we to give in to the show of force and the implied threat against future action, or were we to fight it and, if so, how? We had no doubt that we had to continue the fight. Anything else would have been abject surrender. Our problem was not whether to fight, but was how to continue the fight. We of the ANC had always stood for a non-racial democracy, and we shrank from any action which might drive the races further apart than they already were. But the hard facts were that fifty years of non-violence had brought the African people nothing but more and more repressive legislation, and fewer and fewer rights. It may not be easy for this Court to understand, but it is a fact that for a long time the people had been talking of violence – of the day when they would fight the White man and win back their country – and we, the leaders of the ANC, had nevertheless always prevailed upon them to avoid violence and to pursue peaceful methods. When some of us discussed this in May and June of 1961, it could not be denied that our policy to achieve a nonracial State by non-violence had achieved nothing, and that our followers were beginning to lose confidence in this policy and were developing disturbing ideas of terrorism. It must not be forgotten that by this time violence had, in fact, become a feature of the South African political scene. […] Each disturbance pointed clearly to the inevitable growth among Africans of the belief that violence was the only way out – it showed that a Government which uses force to maintain its rule teaches the oppressed to use force to oppose it. […] At the beginning of June 1961, after a long and anxious assessment of the South African situation, I, and some colleagues, came to the conclusion that as violence in this country was inevitable, it would be unrealistic and wrong for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the Government met our peaceful demands with force. […] As far as the ANC was concerned, it formed a clear view which can be summarized as follows: a. It was a mass political organization with a political function to fulfil. Its members had joined on the express policy of non-violence. b. Because of all this, it could not and would not undertake violence. This must be stressed. One cannot turn such a body into the small, closely knit organization required for sabotage. Nor would this be politically correct, because it would result in members ceasing to carry out this essential activity: political propaganda and organization. Nor was it permissible to change the whole nature of the organization.

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What is Rhetoric? c. On the other hand, in view of this situation I have described, the ANC was prepared to depart from its fifty-year-old policy of non-violence to this extent that it would no longer disapprove of properly controlled violence. Hence members who undertook such activity would not be subject to disciplinary action by the ANC.

I say “properly controlled violence” because I made it clear that if I formed the organization I would at all times subject it to the political guidance of the ANC and would not undertake any different form of activity from that contemplated without the consent of the ANC. And I shall now tell the Court how that form of violence came to be determined. As a result of this decision, Umkhonto was formed in November 1961. When we took this decision, and subsequently formulated our plans, the ANC heritage of non-violence and racial harmony was very much with us. We felt that the country was drifting towards a civil war in which Blacks and Whites would fight each other. We  viewed the situation with alarm. Civil war could mean the destruction of what the ANC stood for; with civil war, racial peace would be more difficult than ever to achieve. We already have examples in South African history of the results of war. It has taken more than fifty years for the scars of the South African War to disappear. How much longer would it take to eradicate the scars of inter-racial civil war, which could not be fought without a great loss of life on both sides? The avoidance of civil war had dominated our thinking for many years, but when we decided to adopt violence as part of our policy, we realized that we might one day have to face the prospect of such a war. This had to be taken into account in formulating our plans. […] Four forms of violence were possible. There is sabotage, there is guerrilla warfare, there is terrorism, and there is open revolution. We chose to adopt the first method and to exhaust it before taking any other decision. In the light of our political background the choice was a logical one. Sabotage did not involve loss of life, and it offered the best hope for future race relations. Bitterness would be kept to a minimum and, if the policy bore fruit, democratic government could become a reality. […] Attacks on the economic life lines of the country were to be linked with sabotage on Government buildings and other symbols of apartheid. These attacks would serve as a source of inspiration to our people. In addition, they would provide an outlet for those people who were urging the adoption of violent methods and would enable us to give concrete proof to our followers that we had adopted a stronger line and were fighting back against Government violence. In addition, if mass action were successfully organized, and mass reprisals taken, we felt that sympathy for our cause would be roused in other countries, and that greater pressure would be brought to bear on the South African Government. This then was the plan. Umkhonto was to perform sabotage, and strict instructions were given to its members right from the start, that on no account were they to injure or kill people in planning or carrying out operations. […] Umkhonto had its first operation on 16 December 1961, when Government buildings in Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and Durban were attacked. […] Suddenly there was hope again. Things were happening. People in the townships became eager for political news. A great deal of enthusiasm was generated by the initial successes, and people began to speculate on how soon freedom would be obtained.

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But we in Umkhonto weighed up the white response with anxiety. The lines were being drawn. The whites and blacks were moving into separate camps, and the prospects of avoiding a civil war were made less. The white newspapers carried reports that sabotage would be punished by death. If this was so, how could we continue to keep Africans away from terrorism? Already scores of Africans had died as a result of racial friction. […] In the long run we felt certain we must succeed, but at what cost to ourselves and the rest of the country? And if this happened, how could black and white ever live together again in peace and harmony? These were the problems that faced us, and these were our decisions. Experience convinced us that rebellion would offer the Government limitless opportunities for the indiscriminate slaughter of our people. But it was precisely because the soil of South Africa is already drenched with the blood of innocent Africans that we felt it our duty to make preparations as a long-term undertaking to use force in order to defend ourselves against force. If war were inevitable, we wanted the fight to be conducted on terms most favorable to our people. The fight which held out prospects best for us and the least risk of life to both sides was guerrilla warfare. We decided, therefore, in our preparations for the future, to make provision for the possibility of guerrilla warfare. […] I started to make a study of the art of war and revolution and, whilst abroad, underwent a course in military training. If there was to be guerrilla warfare, I wanted to be able to stand and fight with my people and to share the hazards of war with them. […] Another of the allegations made by the State is that the aims and objects of the ANC and the Communist Party are the same. I wish to deal with this and with my own political position, because I must assume that the State may try to argue from certain Exhibits that I tried to introduce Marxism into the ANC. The allegation as to the ANC is false. […] The ideological creed of the ANC is, and always has been, the creed of African Nationalism. It is not the concept of African Nationalism expressed in the cry, “Drive the White man into the sea.” The African Nationalism for which the ANC stands is the concept of freedom and fulfilment for the African people in their own land. The most important political document ever adopted by the ANC is the Freedom Charter. It is by no means a blueprint for a socialist state. […] It is true that there has often been close co-operation between the ANC and the Communist Party. But co-operation is merely proof of a common goal – in this case the removal of white supremacy – and is not proof of a complete community of interests. […] I joined the ANC in 1944, and in my younger days I held the view that the policy of admitting communists to the ANC […] would lead to a watering down of the concept of African Nationalism. At that stage I was a member of the African National Congress Youth League, and was one of a group which moved for the expulsion of communists from the ANC. This proposal was heavily defeated. Amongst those who voted against the proposal were some of the most conservative sections of African political opinion. They defended the policy on the ground that from its inception the ANC was formed and built up, not as a political party with one school of political thought, but as a Parliament of the African people, accommodating people of various political convictions, all united by the common goal of national liberation. I was eventually won over to this point of view and I have upheld it ever since.

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[…] I turn now to my own position. I have denied that I am a communist, and I think that in the circumstances I am obliged to state exactly what my political beliefs are. I have always regarded myself, in the first place, as an African patriot. […] Today I am attracted by the idea of a classless society, an attraction which springs in part from Marxist reading and, in part, from my admiration of the structure and organization of early African societies in this country. The land, then the main means of production, belonged to the tribe. There were no rich or poor and there was no exploitation. It is true, as I have already stated, that I have been influenced by Marxist thought. But this is also true of many of the leaders of the new independent States. Such widely different persons as Gandhi, Nehru, Nkrumah, and Nasser all acknowledge this fact. We all accept the need for some form of socialism to enable our people to catch up with the advanced countries of this world and to overcome their legacy of extreme poverty. But this does not mean we are Marxists. Indeed, for my own part, I believe that it is open to debate whether the Communist Party has any specific role to play at this particular stage of our political struggle. The basic task at the present moment is the removal of race discrimination and the attainment of democratic rights on the basis of the Freedom Charter. In so far as that Party furthers this task, I welcome its assistance. I realize that it is one of the means by which people of all races can be drawn into our struggle. From my reading of Marxist literature and from conversations with Marxists, I have gained the impression that communists regard the parliamentary system of the West as undemocratic and reactionary. But, on the contrary, I am an admirer of such a system. The Magna Carta, the Petition of Rights, and the Bill of Rights are documents which are held in veneration by democrats throughout the world. I have great respect for British political institutions, and for the country‘s system of justice. I regard the British Parliament as the most democratic institution in the world, and the independence and impartiality of its judiciary never fail to arouse my admiration. The American Congress, that country‘s doctrine of separation of powers, as well as the independence of its judiciary, arouses in me similar sentiments. […] Our fight is against real, and not imaginary, hardships or, to use the language of the State Prosecutor, “so-called hardships.” Basically, we fight against two features which are the hallmarks of African life in South Africa and which are entrenched by legislation which we seek to have repealed. These features are poverty and lack of human dignity, and we do not need communists or so-called “agitators” to teach us about these things. South Africa is the richest country in Africa, and could be one of the richest countries in the world. But it is a land of extremes and remarkable contrasts. The whites enjoy what may well be the highest standard of living in the world, whilst Africans live in poverty and misery. Forty per cent of the Africans live in hopelessly overcrowded and, in some cases, drought-stricken Reserves, where soil erosion and the overworking of the soil makes it impossible for them to live properly off the land. Thirty per cent are laborers, labor tenants, and squatters on white farms and work and live under conditions similar to those of the serfs of the Middle Ages. The other 30 per cent live in towns where they have developed economic and social habits which bring them closer in many respects to white standards. Yet most Africans, even in this group, are impoverished by low incomes and high cost of living.

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[…] The complaint of Africans, however, is not only that they are poor and the whites are rich, but that the laws which are made by the whites are designed to preserve this situation. There are two ways to break out of poverty. The first is by formal education, and the second is by the worker acquiring a greater skill at his work and thus higher wages. As far as Africans are concerned, both these avenues of advancement are deliberately curtailed by legislation. The present Government has always sought to hamper Africans in their search for education. One of their early acts, after coming into power, was to stop subsidies for African school feeding. Many African children who attended schools depended on this supplement to their diet. This was a cruel act. […] The Government often answers its critics by saying that Africans in South Africa are economically better off than the inhabitants of the other countries in Africa. I do not know whether this statement is true and doubt whether any comparison can be made without having regard to the cost-of-living index in such countries. But even if it is true, as far as the African people are concerned it is irrelevant. Our complaint is not that we are poor by comparison with people in other countries, but that we are poor by comparison with the white people in our own country, and that we are prevented by legislation from altering this imbalance. The lack of human dignity experienced by Africans is the direct result of the policy of white supremacy. White supremacy implies black inferiority. Legislation designed to preserve white supremacy entrenches this notion. Menial tasks in South Africa are invariably performed by Africans. When anything has to be carried or cleaned the white man will look around for an African to do it for him, whether the African is employed by him or not. Because of this sort of attitude, whites tend to regard Africans as a separate breed. They do not look upon them as people with families of their own; they do not realize that they have emotions – that they fall in love like white people do; that they want to be with their wives and children like white people want to be with theirs; that they want to earn enough money to support their families properly, to feed and clothe them and send them to school. And what “house-boy” or “garden-boy” or laborer can ever hope to do this? […] Above all, we want equal political rights, because without them our disabilities will be permanent. I know this sounds revolutionary to the whites in this country, because the majority of voters will be Africans. This makes the white man fear democracy. But this fear cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the only solution which will guarantee racial harmony and freedom for all. It is not true that the enfranchisement of all will result in racial domination. Political division, based on color, is entirely artificial and, when it disappears, so will the domination of one color group by another. The ANC has spent half a century fighting against racialism. When it triumphs it will not change that policy. This then is what the ANC is fighting. Their struggle is a truly national one. It is a struggle of the African people, inspired by their own suffering and their own experience. It is a struggle for the right to live. During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

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9.  Johnnie Cochran, Closing Argument, OJ Simpson Trial (excerpts) (September 27–28, 1995) 23 Johnnie Lee Cochran (1937–2005) led the defense team in The People of the State of California v. O.J. Simpson (1995). The NFL celebrity had been charged with the murder of his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles. In the highly controversial trial, Cochran’s defense led the jury to find Simpson not guilty. The defendant, Mr. Orenthal James Simpson, is now afforded an opportunity to argue the case, if you will, but I’m not going to argue with you, ladies and gentlemen. What I’m going to do is to try and discuss the reasonable inferences which I feel can be drawn from this evidence. At the outset, let me join with the others in thanking you for the service that you’ve rendered. You are truly a marvelous jury, the longest serving jury in Los Angeles County, perhaps the most patient and healthy jury we’ve ever seen. I hope that your health and your good health continues. […] You are empowered to do justice. You are empowered to ensure that this great system of ours works. Listen for a moment, will you, please. One of my favorite people in history is the great Frederick Douglass. He said shortly after the slaves were freed, quote, “In a composite nation like ours as before the law, there should be no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no white, no black, but common country, common citizenship, equal rights and a common destiny.” This marvelous statement was made more than a hundred years ago. It’s an ideal worth striving for and one that we still strive for. We haven’t reached this goal yet, but certainly in this great country of ours, we’re trying. With a jury such as this, we hope we can do that in this particular case. […] A good efficient, competent, noncorrupt police department will carefully set about the business of investigating homicides. They won’t rush to judgment. They won’t be bound by an obsession to win at all costs. They will set about trying to apprehend the killer or killers and trying to protect the innocent from suspicion. In this case, the victims’ families had an absolute right to demand exactly just that in this case. But it was clear, unfortunately, that in this case there was another agenda. From the very first orders issued by the LAPD so-called brass, they were more concerned with their own images, the publicity that might be generated from this case, than they were in doing professional police work. That’s why this case has become such a hallmark, and that’s why Mr. Simpson is the one on trial. But your verdict in this case will go far beyond the walls of Department 103, because your verdict talks about justice in America and it talks about the police and whether they’re above the law and it looks at the police perhaps as though they haven’t been looked at very recently. Remember, I told you this is not for the naïve, the faint of heart, or the timid. So it seems to us that the evidence shows that professional police work took a backseat right at the beginning. Untrained officers trampled – remember, I used the word in opening statement – they traipsed through the evidence. […] 23

Source: Walraven, Jack. People v. Simpson, Case No. BAO97211, 1995 WL 686429 (Cal. Super. L.A. County Dept. 103 1995). Unofficial Transcript, http://simpson.walraven.org/sep27.html and http://simpson.walraven.org/sep28.html.

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I was thinking last night about this case and their theory and how it didn’t make sense and how it didn’t fit and how something is wrong. It occurred to me how they were going to come here, stand up here and tell you how O. J. Simpson was going to disguise himself. He was going to put on a knit cap and some dark clothes, and he was going to get in his white Bronco, this recognizable person, and go over and kill his wife. That’s what they want you to believe. That’s how silly their argument is. And I said to myself, maybe I can demonstrate this graphically. Let me show you something. This is a knit cap. Let me put this knit cap on. [Puts on cap.] You have seen me for a year. If I put this knit cap on, who am I? Still I’m Johnnie Cochran with a knit cap. And if you looked at O. J. Simpson over there – and he has a rather large head – O. J. Simpson in a knit cap from two blocks away is still O. J. Simpson. It’s no disguise. It’s no disguise. It makes no sense. It doesn’t fit. If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit. […] I hope that during this phase of my argument I have demonstrated to you that this really is a case about a rush to judgment, an obsession to win, at all costs, a willingness to distort, twist, theorize in any fashion to try to get you to vote guilty in this case where it is not warranted. These metaphors about an ocean of evidence or a mountain of evidence are little more than a tiny, tiny stream, if at all, that points equally toward innocence, that any mountain has long ago been reduced to little more than a molehill under an avalanche of lies and complexity and conspiracy. This is what we’ve shown you. And so as great as America is, we have not yet reached the point where there is equality in rights or equality of opportunity. I started off talking to you a little bit about Frederick Douglass and what he said more than a hundred years ago, for there are still the Mark Fuhrmans in this world, in this country, who hate and are yet embraced by people in power. But you and I, fighting for freedom and ideals and for justice for all, must continue to fight to expose hate and genocidal racism and these tendencies. We then become the guardians of the Constitution. […] This case is a tragedy for everybody, for certainly the victims and their families, for the Simpson family – and they are victims, too, because they lost the ex-daughter-inlaw – for the defendant. He has been in custody since June of 1994 for a crime that he didn’t commit. Someone has taken these children’s mother. I certainly hope that your decision doesn’t take their father. […] I may never have an opportunity again to speak to you, certainly not in this setting. […] In times like these we often turn to the Bible for some answers. […] I happen to really like the book of Proverbs and in Proverbs it talks a lot about false witnesses. It says that a false witness shall not be unpunished and he that speaketh lies shall not escape. That meant a lot to me in this case because there was Mark Fuhrman acting like a choirboy, making you believe he was the best witness that walked in here, generally applauded for his wonderful performance. It turns out he was the biggest liar in this courtroom during this process, for the Bible had already told us the answer, that a false witness shall not be unpunished and he that speaketh lies shall not escape. In that same book it tells us that a faithful witness will not lie but a false witness will utter lies. Finally, in Proverbs it says that he that speaketh the truth showeth the forthrightfulness but a false witness shows deceit. So when we are talking about truth, we are talking about truth and lies and conspiracies and cover-ups. I always think about one of my favorite poems, which I think is so very appropriate for this case. You know when things are at the darkest there is always

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light the next day. In your life, in all of our lives, you have the capacity to transform Mr. O. J. Simpson’s dark yesterday into a bright tomorrow. You have that capacity. You have that power in your hands. And James Russell Lowell said it best about wrong and evil. He said that “Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, – Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, beyond the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadows, keeping watch above his own.”24 You walk with that every day, you carry that with you and things will come to you and you will be able to reveal people who come to you in uniforms and high positions who lie and are corrupt. That is what happened in this case and so the truth is now out. It is now up to you. We are going to pass this baton to you soon. You will do the right thing. You have made a commitment for justice. You will do the right thing. I will someday go on to other cases, no doubt as will Miss Clark and Mr. Darden. Judge Ito will try another case someday, I hope, but this is O. J. Simpson’s one day in court. By your decision you control his very life in your hands. Treat it carefully. Treat it fairly. Be fair. Don’t be part of this continuing cover-up. Do the right thing, remembering that “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” That if these messengers have lied to you, you can’t trust their message. That this has been a search for truth. That no matter how bad it looks, if truth is out there on a scaffold and wrong is in here on the throne, when that scaffold sways, in the future and beyond the dim unknown standeth the same God for all people keeping watch above his own. He watches all of us and he will watch you in your decision. Thank you for your attention. God bless you.

24

James Russell Lowell, “The Present Crisis.”

3 The Modes of Persuasion: Ethos, Pathos, Logos (Character, Passion, Argument)

Pathos or Passion 1. Aristotle, art and 8 (on pity)

of rhetoric

2.1–2 (on anger)

Book 2, Chapter 1 The passions are all those things on account of which people, undergoing a change, alter the judgments they make, things that pain and pleasure accompany – for example, anger, pity, fear, and the other things of that sort, as well as their opposites. But what pertains to each must be divided in three. I mean, for example, in what concerns anger: how the angry are disposed, and with whom they are accustomed to being angry, and at what sorts of things. For if we should grasp one or two of these, but not all of them together, it would be impossible to foster anger in another, and similarly in the case of the other [passions]. Chapter 2 So let anger be a longing, accompanied by pain, for manifest vengeance on account of a manifest slight that was carried out against oneself or those in one’s circle, on the part of those for whom such a slight is inappropriate. […] If, then, this is anger, the angry person is necessarily always angry at a particular individual – for example, at Cleon but not at “human being” as such, and because he did or was about to do something against oneself or somebody in one’s circle; it is necessary too that a certain pleasure attend every instance of anger, namely, the pleasure that stems from the hope of being avenged. For it is pleasant to suppose that one will attain what one is aiming at; nobody aims at things that are manifestly impossible for himself, and the angry person aims at things possible for himself. Now slighting is an actualization of an opinion about something that comes to sight as worth nothing – for we suppose that both bad things and good ones are worth taking seriously, as is whatever is conducive to them – whereas all such things 103

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as amount to nothing at all, or are petty, we suppose to be worth nothing. And there are three forms of slights: contempt as well as spitefulness and insolence. […] And he who is insolent to someone also slights him, for insolence is doing and saying such things as are a source of shame to the person suffering them, not so that some other advantage may accrue to the insolent person or because something happened to him, but so that he may gain pleasure thereby: those who retaliate are not insolent but instead exact revenge. […] And people suppose that it is fitting for them to be thought much of by those who are their inferiors in familial line, power, virtue, and, in general, in whatever respect he himself is much superior – for example, when it comes to money the wealthy man is superior to the poor man; in speaking, the skilled rhetorician to one unable to speak; and ruler to ruled, as well as somebody who supposes he deserves to rule over one deserving to be ruled. […] Further, [someone becomes angry at] those by whom he supposes that he ought to be well treated, namely those whom he has treated or is treating well – either he himself or someone on his account or someone in his circle – or whom he wishes or wished to treat well […] It is clear that [the speaker] must, by his speech, affect [the listeners] such that they are actually in an angry state and that his opponents are responsible for such things as prompt people to anger, and that his opponents are just the sort of persons at whom people get angry. Chapter 8 Let pity be a certain pain at what is manifestly bad, and destructive or painful, and befalls someone who does not deserve it, which one might expect to suffer oneself (or somebody in one’s circle might do so), and this when it appears close at hand. For it is clear that someone who is going to feel pity must necessarily suppose that he is in fact the sort of person who could suffer something bad – either he himself or someone in his circle – and suffer the sort of bad thing as was stated in the definition (or something similar to it or closely comparable). […] But the sorts of people who believe they can suffer are those who have already suffered and managed to make it through; and those who are older, on account of both their prudence and their experience; and the weak; and those who are rather cowardly; and the educated, for they are given to calculating well. Also those who have relatives or offspring or wives, for these are one’s own and can suffer the sorts of things mentioned. […] All painful and distressing things that are destructive are productive of pity, as well as those that are ruinous, and all bad things of some magnitude of which chance is a cause. Things distressing and destructive are: deaths and assaults and bodily sufferings and old age and illnesses and lack of sustenance. As for those bad things of which chance is a cause, these include lack of friends, few friends – hence being torn away from friends and associates is pitiable – ugliness, weakness, [and] lameness. [It is productive of pity also] if something bad happens when it was only to be expected that something good would arise, in particular when this sort of thing happens often. […] As for things that have just now happened or are just about to, they rouse greater pity [than those in the distant past] on account of their proximity in time. For this reason too the relevant signs and the actions involved [also elicit pity]: for example, the clothing of those who have suffered, and everything of that sort, together with the

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speeches and all else of those who are actually suffering – for example, those in the very act of dying. For quite all of these foster greater pity because they appear close at hand. Especially pitiable in such moments of crisis are those who are serious human beings, on the grounds both that the suffering is undeserved and that it is coming to sight before our very eyes.

2.  Thucydides, Cleon on the Fate of the Mytileneans, peloponnesian war 3.37–40 (427 bc) 1 In 428 bc the city of Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos, revolted from Athens in the hope that it could unite the whole island and rule it, urged on in this by the Spartans. The Athenians found this act of rebellion particularly galling because they had always treated the city with consideration, allowing it to maintain its own defensive walls, for example, and fleet of triremes or warships. In their anger, the Athenians initially voted to kill all the Mytilenean adult males and to enslave the women and children. Soon gripped, however, by misgivings over the harshness of their own decree, the Athenians convened a second assembly to reconsider their decision. Here Cleon, “the most violent of the citizens and much the most persuasive with the demos at that time” (Thucydides 3.36.6), rose to speak in favor of maintaining the previous day’s decision: kill all the men and enslave the women and children. 3.37 “On many other occasions before now, I for my part judged democracy to be incapable of ruling others, and especially at present in your change of heart concerning the Mytileneans. For on account of your day-to-day freedom from fear and the absence of any plotting in your relations with one another, you are of the same disposition also as regards the allies; and you believe that your softness does not bring you into danger when either you make mistakes, being persuaded by an argument of theirs, or you give in through pity – without, however, gaining the gratitude of the allies thereby. For you fail to examine the fact that the empire you hold is a tyranny imposed on those who are plotting against you and who are ruled involuntarily, they who heed you not as a result of favors you do them to your own detriment, but rather as a result of your superiority in strength and not their good will. But the most terrible thing of all is this: if nothing will be firmly fixed for us concerning whatever resolutions seem best, and if we will not recognize that a city using inferior but unaltered laws is stronger than one that uses fine laws lacking authority; that ignorance accompanied by moderation is more beneficial than is cleverness accompanied by license; and that more ordinary human beings for the most part manage cities better than do those who are more intelligent. For the latter wish to appear wiser than the laws and to prevail over whatever may be said at a given time bearing on the commonweal, on the grounds that there could not be any other, greater matters in which they could make clear their judgment; and it is a result of some such thing that they most often cause cities to falter. But the former types, mistrusting their own intelligence, deem themselves to be more ignorant than the laws and less 1

Source: Against Demagogues, ed. and trans. Robert C. Bartlett (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020).

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capable of censuring the argument of a fine speaker; and, being impartial judges rather than competitors in a contest, they mostly proceed correctly. We, too, then, ought so to act and not be carried away by cleverness or by a contest in intelligence such that we advise your assembly contrary to the resolution that seemed best to it. 38. “Now as for me, I am of the same judgment; and I wonder at those who are proposing to speak about the Mytileneans again and who have thus fostered a delay, which is more to the advantage of those who have committed injustice. For in that case he who suffers something proceeds against the doer of it with a duller anger, whereas the vengeance that lies as close as possible to the suffering obtains the punishment that is particularly fitting. And I wonder, too, at anyone who will speak against this and deem it worthwhile to contend that the injustices of the Mytileneans are advantageous for us, whereas our misfortunes have become harmful to the allies. In fact it is clear that either he, trusting in his ability to speak, would strive to show that the resolution that seemed altogether best was not in fact pronounced, or else, being carried away by profit, he will attempt to mislead by working out a specious argument. But the city, as a result of such contests, grants the prizes to others while it itself takes on the dangers. And you are to blame in that you conduct contests badly, you who are accustomed to being spectators of speeches, on the one hand, and listeners to deeds, on the other, examining how future deeds will come to pass on the basis of those who speak well about them but, as for actions already undertaken, you regard as more trustworthy not what you actually see of the action done but rather what you hear about it, relying on those who utter fine rebukes of the relevant speech. You are best at being deceived by a speech marked by novelty and at being unwilling to go along with the tried and tested, slaves that you are to whatever is newfangled at a given moment but despisers of whatever is usual or customary. And each person especially wants to be able to speak himself but, failing that, then, in competing with those who do state such things, you want not to be held to be slow in following the judgment rendered, instead anticipating with praise any sharp remark made and being eager to perceive in advance the points stated – but slow to understand in advance what will result from them, since you examine anything else, so to speak, other than the actual circumstances in which we are living and give no adequate thought at all to what is present to hand. You are simply overcome by the pleasure involved in hearing and resemble more spectators seated before sophists than those who are deliberating about a city. 39. “In my attempt to turn you from this, I declare that Mytilene is the single city that has done you the greatest injustice. For I – when it comes to those who cannot bear your rule or who revolted because they were compelled to do so by enemies – I have sympathy for them. But those who are in possession of an island equipped with walls and who were afraid of our enemies only by sea, where they themselves, outfitted with triremes, were not defenseless against them; and who dwell there autonomously and receive from us preeminent honors: it was they who did such things. What else did they do except plot against us and rebel, rather than revolt – for “revolt” belongs to those who have suffered something violent – and seek to destroy us by standing with our worst enemies? And that is more terrible than if, having come into possession of their own power, they had waged war against us. Moreover, the disasters suffered by their neighbors did not serve as an example to them, when all those who revolted from us were subdued, and neither did their present prosperity prompt them to hesitate to enter into terrible dangers. But being bold about the future and filled with hopes greater than their power but less than what they wished for, they declared war, deeming it right to

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set strength before justice. In so doing they supposed that they would prevail and hence attacked us, and not because they are victims of injustice. Those cities whose faring particularly well comes quite unexpectedly usually turn toward insolence, whereas for the most part the good fortune that befalls human beings in accord with their calculation is safer than that which is contrary to their expectation; and it is easier for them to keep faring badly at bay, so to speak, than it is for them to preserve prosperity. The Mytileneans long ago should not have received any different honors from us than did the rest, and in that case they would not have proceeded to this height of insolence. For it is natural in other cases, too, for a human being to feel contempt for that which caters to him but to admire that which does not yield. “And let them be punished even now as the injustice at issue deserves, and do not attach blame only to the few while you absolve the demos. For all alike attacked you, they who could have turned to us and so been in [charge of their] city right now. But in their conviction that the risk run in conjunction with the few was a surer thing, they joined in the revolt. And consider: if you will assign the same penalties to those of the allies who are compelled by the enemies to revolt as you do to those who revolt voluntarily, who is there who will not revolt on the slightest pretext, given that, when they succeed, they gain their freedom and, when they falter, they suffer nothing fatal? Our money and our lives will in that case be subjected to the utmost risk against each city. And upon winning you take over a ruined city and henceforth will be deprived of the revenue from which we derive our strength, but when we falter, we will add enemies to the ones we already have; and the time that we ought to spend opposing those who are at present hostile to us, we will spend waging war against our own allies. 40. “Hope, then – whether won by persuasive argument or purchased with cash – ought not to be held out, on the supposition that they will attain some sympathetic forgiveness for having erred in a manner that is only human. For the harm they did was not involuntary; they hatched a plot knowingly; and it is the involuntary that is forgivable. So I insist now, just as I did at first as well, that you not change your mind about your prior resolutions and that you not make a mistake traceable to the three greatest disasters for the empire: pity; and pleasure in speeches; and equitable treatment. For it is just to grant compassion to those who are similar, but not to those who will not pity us in return and who are necessarily such as always to be our enemies. As for the orators who bring delight through their speeches, let them have a contest that involves other, lesser matters and not one in which the city, while enjoying a momentary pleasure, will suffer a great penalty, whereas they themselves will gain, in return for a good speech, good treatment. And equity is granted to those who will henceforth remain friendly associates rather than to those who continue to be such as they are, our enemies no less. “I make one point by way of summary: in being persuaded by me, you will do simultaneously what is just in regard to the Mytileneans and what is advantageous, whereas if you judge otherwise, you will not gratify them but will exact a penalty against yourselves. For if they were correct to revolt, you ought not to rule. And if indeed you nonetheless deem it worthwhile to rule, even though it is not appropriate, then you must punish them to your advantage, contrary to what is fitting though it be, or put a halt to the empire and act as upright men instead. Deem it right to defend yourselves by means of the same penalty and to disallow those who have managed to survive the plot from coming to sight as less aggrieved than the very plotters; reflect on the things it is only likely they would do were they in a position of superiority over you, especially since

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they were first in committing injustices. It is particularly those who do someone some harm without pretext who attack even so as to destroy him, eyeing warily the danger of an enemy who remains. For he who suffers something not demanded by necessity is harsher when he survives than is an enemy who [gives and receives] equally. “Do not become traitors to your own cause, then, but, bringing yourselves as close as possible to the judgment you held when you suffered and to the estimation you made to crush them above all else, pay them back now. Do not grow soft before the present case or forget the terrible danger that once hung over you. Punish them as they deserve and make of them a clear example to the other allies – that he who revolts will suffer the penalty of death. For if they know this, you will battle your own allies, and thus neglect your enemies, less.”

3.  Shakespeare, Mark Antony’s Speech, 2 julius caesar 3.2.82–108 After the assassination of Julius Caesar, Brutus allows Caesar’s close political friend, Mark Antony, to give a speech at his funeral on the condition that he will not criticize Brutus and the other conspirators against Caesar. Shakespeare recreates Antony’s speech in iambic pentameter, a speech that formally begins with repeated refusal to criticize Brutus and the other conspirators, but which ultimately has the effect of arousing the fury of the people against them. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it. Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest— For Brutus is an honourable man; So are they all, all honourable men— Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral. He was my friend, faithful and just to me: But Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man. He hath brought many captives home to Rome Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill: Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man. 2

Source: Open Source Shakespeare, www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view .php?WorkID=juliuscaesar&Act=3&Scene=2&Scope=scene.

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You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And, sure, he is an honourable man. I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause: What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him? O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason. Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till it come back to me.

4.  Huey Long, “Every Man a King” (excerpts) (February 23, 1934) 3 Huey Long (1893–1935) served as the populist governor (1928–32) and US Senator (1932–35) of Louisiana and rose to prominence in the Democratic Party by attacking President Roosevelt’s New Deal Programs in the 1930s as insufficient. He delivered the following speech over the relatively new medium of radio. Ladies and gentlemen, I have only thirty minutes in which to speak to you this evening, and I, therefore, will not be able to discuss in detail so much as I can write when I have all of the time and space that is allowed me for the subjects, but I will undertake to sketch them very briefly without manuscript or preparation, so that you can understand them so well as I can tell them to you tonight. I contend, my friends, that we have no difficult problem to solve in America, and that is the view of nearly everyone with whom I have discussed the matter here in Washington and elsewhere throughout the United States – that we have no very difficult problem to solve. 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. We have a marvelous love for this government of ours; in fact, it is almost a religion, and it is well that it should be, because we have a splendid form of government and we have a splendid set of laws. We have everything here that we need, except that we have neglected the fundamentals upon which the American government was principally predicated. 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 for 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.” 3

Source: Senate.gov, www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/EveryManKing.pdf.

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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 billion and that another child was to be born to inherit nothing? Did that mean, my friends, that someone would come into this world without having had an opportunity, of course, to have hit one lick of work, should be born with more than it and all of its children and children’s children could ever dispose of, but that another one would have to be born into a life of starvation? That was not the meaning of the Declaration of Independence when it said that all men are created equal or “That we hold that all men are created equal.” Nor was it the meaning of the Declaration of Independence when it said that they held that there were certain rights that were inalienable – the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 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 million people? Is that, my friends, giving them a fair shake of the dice or anything like the inalienable right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or anything resembling the fact that all people are created equal; when we have today in America thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions of children on the verge of starvation in a land that is overflowing with too much to eat and too much to wear? I do not think you will contend that, and I do not think for a moment that they will contend it. Now let us see if we cannot return this government to the Declaration of Independence and see if we are going to do anything regarding it. Why should we hesitate or why should we quibble or why should we quarrel with one another to find out what the difficulty is, when we know what the Lord told us what the difficulty is, and Moses wrote it out so a blind man could see it, then Jesus told us all about it, and it was later written in the Book of James, where everyone could read it? I refer to the Scriptures, now, my friends, and give you what it says not for the purpose of convincing you of the wisdom of myself, not for the purpose, ladies and gentlemen, of convincing you of the fact that I am quoting the Scripture means that I am to be more believed than someone else; but I quote you the Scripture, or rather refer you to the Scripture, because whatever you see there you may rely upon will never be disproved so long as you or your children or anyone may live; and you may further depend upon the fact that not one historical fact that the Bible has ever contained has ever yet been disproved by any scientific discovery or by reason of anything that has been disclosed to man through his own individual mind or through the wisdom of the Lord which the Lord has allowed him to have. 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, that nothing should be held permanently by any one person, and that fifty 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. Those two things the Almighty said to be necessary – I should say He knew to be necessary, or else He would not have so prescribed that the property would be kept among the general run of the people, and that everyone would continue to share in it; so that no one man would get half of it and hand it down to a son, who takes half of what was left, and that son hand it down to another one, who would take half of what

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was left, until, like a snowball going downhill, all of the snow was off of the ground except what the snowball had. I believe that was the judgment and the view and the law of the Lord, that we would have to distribute wealth ever so often, in order that there could not be people starving to death in a land of plenty, as there is in America today. We have in America today more wealth, more goods, more food, more clothing, more houses than we have ever had. We have everything in abundance here. We have the farm problem, my friends, because we have too much cotton, because we have too much wheat, and have too much corn, and too much potatoes. We have a home-loan problem because we have too many houses, and yet nobody can buy them and live in them. We have trouble, my friends, in the country, because we have too much money owing, the greatest indebtedness that has ever been given to civilization, where it has been shown that we are incapable of distributing the actual things that are here, because the people have not money enough to supply themselves with them, and because the greed of a few men is such that they think it is necessary that they own everything, and their pleasure consists in the starvation of the masses, and in their possessing things they cannot use, and their children cannot use, but who bask in the splendor of sunlight and wealth, casting darkness and despair and impressing it on everyone else. “So, therefore,” said the Lord, in effect, “if you see these things that now have occurred and exist in this and other countries, there must be a constant scattering of wealth in any country if this country is to survive.” “Then,” said the Lord, in effect, “every seventh year there shall be a remission of debts; there will be no debts after seven years.” That was the law. […] Now, ladies and gentlemen, if I may proceed to give you some other words that I think you can understand: I am not going to belabor you by quoting tonight—I am going to tell you what the wise men of all ages and all times, down even to the present day, have all said: that you must keep the wealth of the country scattered, and you must limit the amount that any one man can own. You cannot let any man own $300 billion or $400 billion. If you do, one man can own all of the wealth that the United States has in it. Now, my friends, if you were off on an island where there were one hundred lunches, you could not let one man eat up the hundred lunches, or take the hundred lunches and not let anybody else eat any of them. If you did, there would not be anything else for the balance of the people to consume. So, we have in America today, my friends, a condition by which about ten men dominate the means of activity in at least 85 percent of the activities that you own. They either own directly everything or they have got some kind of mortgage on it, with a very small percentage to be excepted. They own the banks, they own the steel mills, they own the railroads, they own the bonds, they own the mortgages, they own the stores, and they have chained the country from one end to the other until there is not any kind of business that a small, independent man could go into today and make a living, and there is not any kind of business that an independent man can go into and make any money to buy an automobile with; and they have finally and gradually and steadily eliminated everybody from the fields in which there is a living to be made, and still they have got little enough sense to think they ought to be able to get more business out of it anyway. If you reduce a man to the point where he is starving to death and bleeding and dying, how do you expect that man to get hold of any money to spend with you? It is not possible.

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Then, ladies and gentlemen, how do you expect people to live, when the wherewith cannot be had by the people? In the beginning I quoted from the Scriptures. I hope you will understand that I am not quoting Scripture to you to convince you of my goodness personally, because that is a thing between me and my Maker, that is something as to how I stand with my Maker and as to how you stand with your Maker. That is not concerned with this issue, except and unless there are those of you who would be so good as to pray for the souls of some of us. But the Lord gave his law, and in the Book of James they said so, that the rich should weep and howl for the miseries that had come upon them; and, therefore, it was written that when the rich hold goods they could not use and could not consume, you will inflict punishment on them, and nothing but days of woe ahead of them. Then we have heard of the great Greek philosopher, Socrates, and the greater Greek philosopher, Plato, and we have read the dialog between Plato and Socrates, in which one said that great riches brought on great poverty, and would be destructive of a country. Read what they said. 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. It is a very simple process of mathematics that you do not have to study, and that no one is going to discuss with you. So that was the view of Socrates and Plato. That was the view of the English statesmen. That was the view of American statesmen. That was the view of American statesmen like Daniel Webster, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, and Theodore Roosevelt, and even as late as Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Both of these men, Mr. Hoover and Mr. Roosevelt, came out and said there had to be a decentralization of wealth, but neither one of them did anything about it. But, nevertheless, they recognized the principle. The fact that neither one of them ever did anything about it is their own problem that I am not undertaking to criticize; but had Mr. Hoover carried out what he says ought to be done, he would be retiring from the president’s office, very probably three years from now, instead of one year ago; and had Mr. Roosevelt proceeded along the lines that he stated were necessary for the decentralization of wealth, he would have gone, my friends, a long way already, and within a few months he would have probably reached a solution of all of the problems that afflict this country today. But I wish to warn you now that nothing that has been done up to this date has taken one dime away from these big-fortune holders; they own just as much as they did, and probably a little bit more; they hold just as many of the debts of the common people as they ever held, and probably a little bit more; and unless we, my friends, are going to give the people of this country a fair shake of the dice, by which they will all get something out of the funds of this land, there is not a chance on the topside of this God’s eternal earth by which we can rescue this country and rescue the people of this country. It is necessary to save the government of the country, but is much more necessary to save the people of America. We love this country. We love this government. It is a religion, I say. It is a kind of religion people have read of when women, in the name

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of religion, would take their infant babes and throw them into the burning flame, where they would be instantly devoured by the all-consuming fire, in days gone by; and there probably are some people of the world even today, who, in the name of religion, throw their own babes to destruction; but in the name of our good government people today are seeing their own children hungry, tired, half naked, lifting their tear-dimmed eyes into the sad faces of their fathers and mothers, who cannot give them food and clothing they both needed, and which is necessary to sustain them, and that goes on day after day, and night after night, when day gets into darkness and blackness, knowing those children would arise in the morning without being fed, and probably go to bed at night without being fed. Yet in the name of our government, and all alone, those people undertake and strive as hard as they can to keep a good government alive, and how long they can stand that no one knows. If I were in their place tonight, the place where millions are, I hope that I would have what I might say – I cannot give you the word to express the kind of fortitude they have; that is the word – I hope that I might have the fortitude to praise and honor my government that had allowed me here in this land, where there is too much to eat and too much to wear, to starve in order that a handful of men can have so much more than they can ever eat or they can ever wear. Now, we have organized a society, and we call it “Share Our Wealth Society,” a society with the motto “every man a king.” Every man a king, so there would be no such thing as a man or woman who did not have the necessities of life, who would not be dependent upon the whims and caprices and ipse dixit of the financial martyrs for a living. What do we propose by this society? We propose to limit the wealth of big men in the country. There is an average of $15,000 in wealth to every family in America. That is right here today. We do not propose to divide it up equally. We do not propose a division of wealth, but we propose to limit poverty that we will allow to be inflicted upon any man’s family. We will not say we are going to try to guarantee any equality, or $15,000 to families. No; but we do say that one third of the average is low enough for any one family to hold, that there should be a guaranty of a family wealth of around $5,000; enough for a home, an automobile, a radio, and the ordinary conveniences, and the opportunity to educate their children; a fair share of the income of this land thereafter to that family so there will be no such thing as merely the select to have those things, and so there will be no such thing as a family living in poverty and distress. We have to limit fortunes. Our present plan is that we will allow no one man to own more than $50 million. We think that with that limit we will be able to carry out the balance of the program. It may be necessary that we limit it to less than $50 million. It may be necessary, in working out of the plans, that no man’s fortune would be more than $10 million or $15 million. But be that as it may, it will still be more than any one man, or any one man and his children and their children, will be able to spend in their lifetimes; and it is not necessary or reasonable to have wealth piled up beyond that point where we cannot prevent poverty among the masses. Another thing we propose is old-age pension of $30 a month for everyone that is sixty years old. Now, we do not give this pension to a man making $1,000 a year, and we do not give it to him if he has $10,000 in property, but outside of that we do. We will limit hours of work. There is not any necessity of having overproduction. I think all you have got to do, ladies and gentlemen, is just limit the hours of work to such an extent as people will work only so long as is necessary to produce enough

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for all of the people to have what they need. Why, ladies and gentlemen, let us say that all of these labor-saving devices reduce hours down to where you do not have to work but four hours a day; that is enough for these people, and then praise be the name of the Lord, if it gets that good. Let it be good and not a curse, and then we will have five hours a day and five days a week, or even less than that, and we might give a man a whole month off during a year, or give him two months; and we might do what other countries have seen fit to do, and what I did in Louisiana, by having schools by which adults could go back and learn the things that have been discovered since they went to school. We will not have any trouble taking care of the agricultural situation. All you have to do is balance your production with your consumption. You simply have to abandon a particular crop that you have too much of, and all you have to do is store the surplus for the next year, and the government will take it over. When you have good crops in the area in which the crops that have been planted are sufficient for another year, put in your public works in the particular year when you do not need to raise any more, and by that means you get everybody employed. When the government has enough of any particular crop to take care of all the people, that will be all that is necessary; and in order to do all of this, our taxation is going to be to take the billion-dollar fortunes and strip them down to frying size, not to exceed $50 million, and if it is necessary to come to $10 million, we will come to $10 million. We have worked the proposition out to guarantee a limit upon property (and no man will own less than one third the average), and guarantee a reduction of fortunes and a reduction of hours to spread wealth throughout this country. We would care for the old people above sixty and take them away from this thriving industry and give them a chance to enjoy the necessities and live in ease, and thereby lift from the market the labor which would probably create a surplus of commodities. Those are the things we propose to do. “Every man a king.” Every man to eat when there is something to eat; all to wear something when there is something to wear. That makes us all a sovereign. You cannot solve these things through these various and sundry alphabetical codes. You can have the NRA and PWA and CWA and the UUG and GIN 3 and any other kind of “dad-gummed” lettered code. You can wait until doomsday and see twenty-five more alphabets, but that is not going to solve this proposition. Why hide? Why quibble? You know what the trouble is. The man that says he does not know what the trouble is is just hiding his face to keep from seeing the sunlight. 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 a hundred thousand 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 million people together, you know what the trouble is. We had these great incomes in this country; but the farmer, who plowed from sunup to sundown, who labored here from sunup to sundown for six days a week, wound up at the end of the time with practically nothing. And we ought to take care of the veterans of the wars in this program. That is a small matter. Suppose it does cost a billion dollars a year—that means that the money will be scattered throughout this country. We ought to pay them a bonus. We can do it. We ought to take care of every single one of the sick and disabled veterans. I do not care whether a man got sick on the battlefield or did not; every man that wore the uniform of this country

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is entitled to be taken care of, and there is money enough to do it; and we need to spread the wealth of the country, which you did not do in what you call the NRA [the National Recovery Administration, created by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933]. If the NRA has done any good, I can put it all in my eye without having it hurt. All I can see that the NRA has done is to put the little man out of business—the little merchant in his store, the little Dago that is running a fruit stand, or the Greek shoe shining stand, who has to take hold of a code of 275 pages and study it with a spirit level and compass and looking glass; he has to hire a Philadelphia lawyer to tell him what is in the code; and by the time he learns what the code is, he is in jail or out of business; and they have got a chain code system that has already put him out of business. The NRA is not worth anything, and I said so when they put it through. […] This is HUEY P. LONG talking, United States Senator, Washington, D.C. Write me and let me send you the data on this proposition. Enroll with us. Let us make known to the people what we are going to do. I will send you a button, if I have got enough of them left. We have got a little button that some of our friends designed, with our message around the rim of the button, and in the center “Every man a king.” Many thousands of them are meeting through the United States, and every day we are getting hundreds of hundreds of letters. Share Our Wealth societies are now being organized, and people have it within their power to relieve themselves from this terrible situation. […] Now, my friends, I am going to stop. I thank you for this opportunity to talk to you. I am having to talk under the auspices and by the grace and permission of the National Broadcasting System tonight, and they are letting me talk free. If I had the money, and I wish I had the money, I would like to talk to you more often on this line, but I have not got it, and I cannot expect these people to give it to me free except on some rare instance. But, my friends, I hope to have the opportunity to talk with you, and I am writing to you, and I hope that you will get up and help in the work, because the resolution and bills are before Congress, and we hope to have your help in getting together and organizing your Share Our Wealth Society. Now, that I have but a minute left, I want to say that I suppose my family is listening in on the radio in New Orleans, and I will say to my wife and three children that I am entirely well and hope to be home before many more days, and I hope they have listened to my speech tonight, and I wish them and all of their neighbors and friends everything good that may be had. I thank you, my friends, for your kind attention, and I hope you will enroll with us, take care of your own work in the work of this government, and share or help in our Share Our Wealth Society. I thank you.

Ethos or Character 1.  aristotle,

art of rhetoric

2.12, 16 (excerpts)

Book 2, Chapter 12 [On the character of young people] Now the characters of the young are marked by desire, and they are such as to do the things they desire. And among the bodily desires they are especially apt to follow the one for sex, and in this they lack self-restraint.

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When it comes to desires, the young are easily changeable and fickle, and although they desire intensely, they cease [to desire] rapidly. For their wishes are keen but not great, like the thirst and hunger of the sickly. [The young] are characterized also by spiritedness and a sharp temper, and they are such as to follow impulse; they also succumb to spiritedness, for on account of a love of honor, they do not tolerate being slighted but are indignant, if they suppose they have been done an injustice. And although they do love honor, they love victory more, for youth desires superiority, and victory is a kind of superiority. And they love both of these more than they love money; they are lovers of money least of all, because they have not yet experienced want. […] They have, not a cynical character, but a naïve one, because they have not yet observed many wicked things. They are also readily trusting because they have not yet suffered many deceptions. They are hopeful too because, like those who are drunk, the young are by nature hot-blooded and, at the same time, they have not yet suffered many failures. In fact they live for the most part on hope, since hope belongs to the future, memory to what has gone by, and for the young the future is vast, the past brief. On the first day, so to speak, one can remember nothing, but hope for anything. They are also readily deceived for the reason mentioned, since they easily form hopes. They are also rather courageous, since they are characterized by spiritedness and hopefulness, the former prompting them not to be afraid, the latter to be confident. Nobody in the grip of anger is afraid, and hoping for something good inspires confidence. They are also sensitive to shame because, having been educated by the law alone, they do not yet suppose that any other things are noble. They are also great-souled, for they have not yet been humbled by life – they are instead without experience of the necessities – and greatness of soul consists in deeming oneself deserving of great things, which hopefulness brings about. The young also choose to do what is noble over what is advantageous, since they live more by their character than by calculation, and calculation aims at the advantageous, virtue at the noble. They are also fond of friendship and comradeship to a greater degree than are the other ages, because they delight in living together, and they do not yet judge anything with a view to advantage, the result being that they do not make friends for that reason either. And quite all the mistakes they make tend in the direction of excess and vehemence, in violation of the saying of Chilon [i.e., nothing in excess], for they do all things excessively: they feel friendly affection to excess and hatred to excess, and all else similarly. They also suppose that they know everything and emphatically affirm it, since this is a cause of doing everything to excess. The injustices they commit are traceable to insolence, not to malice. They are also given to pitying, because they suppose that all are fine people and better [than they are in fact]. For they take their measure of their neighbors by their own lack of vice, such that they suppose their neighbors to be suffering undeservedly. They also are fond of laughter and hence are witty, for wittiness is educated insolence. Such, then, is the character of the young. Chapter 16 As for the character traits that accompany wealth, these are plain for quite all to see. For the wealthy are insolent and arrogant, being affected in some way by the posses-

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sion of wealth; they are disposed as are those who possess all good things together. For wealth is like a criterion of the worth of other things, and so all else seems to be purchasable by means of it. They are also given to self-indulgence and pretentiousness, being self-indulgent on account of luxury and the open display of their prosperity, pretentious and vulgar because they all are accustomed to spending their time concerned with what is loved and admired by them, and because they suppose that others strive after the very things they themselves do. At the same time, it is only to be expected that they have this experience, for there are many people who need what they have. Hence also the remark of Simonides was made about the wise and the wealthy, in response to the question posed by Hiero’s wife as to whether it is superior to be wealthy or wise. He said “wealthy” – for he contended that he sees the wise spending their time at the doors of the wealthy. And they suppose that they deserve to rule, for they suppose that they possess what renders one deserving of rule. And, in sum, the character trait belonging to wealth is that of a happy fool.

2.  Richard Nixon, “Checkers” Speech (September 23, 1952) 4 Richard Nixon (1913–94) here defends himself in a TV address against the accusations of financial improprieties which threatened his candidacy as Vice President for Eisenhower on the Republican ticket in the 1952 presidential election. This speech helped Nixon secure his place as Eisenhower’s running-mate and Vice President (1953–61). Nixon would go on to be elected twice to the presidency, but resigned from that office on August 9, 1974, in the face of a looming impeachment. My Fellow Americans, I come before you tonight as a candidate for the Vice-Presidency and as a man whose honesty and integrity has been questioned. Now, the usual political thing to do when charges are made against you is to either ignore them or to deny them without giving details. I believe we’ve had enough of that in the United States, particularly with the present Administration in Washington, D.C. To me the office of the Vice Presidency of the United States is a great office, and I feel that the people have got to have confidence in the integrity of the men who run for that office and who might attain them. I have a theory, too, that the best and only answer to a smear or to an honest misunderstanding of the facts is to tell the truth. And that’s why I am here tonight. I want to tell you my side of the case. I am sure that you have read the charges, and you have heard it, that I, Senator Nixon, took $18,000 from a group of my supporters. Now, was that wrong? And let me say that it was wrong. I am saying it, incidentally, that it was wrong, not just illegal, because it isn’t a question of whether it was legal or illegal, that isn’t enough. The question is, was it morally wrong. I say that it was morally wrong – if any of that $18,000 went to Senator Nixon, for my personal use. I say that it was morally wrong if it was secretly given and secretly handled. 4

Source: Watergate.info, www.watergate.info/nixon/checkers-speech.shtml.

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And I say that it was morally wrong if any of the contributors got special favors for the contributions that they made. And in answer to those questions let me say this: not a cent of the $18,000 or any other money of that type ever went to me for my personal use. Every penny of it was used to pay for political expenses that I did not think should be charged to the taxpayers of the United States. It was not a secret fund. As a matter of fact, when I was on “Meet the Press” – some of you may have seen it last Sunday – Peter Edson came up to me, after the program, and he said, “Dick, what about this fund we hear about?” And I said, “Well, there is no secret about it. Go out and see Dana Smith who was the administrator of the fund,” and I gave him his address. And I said you will find that the purpose of the fund simply was to defray political expenses that I did not feel should be charged to the Government. And third, let me point out, and I want to make this particularly clear, that no contributor to this fund, no contributor to any of my campaigns, has ever received any consideration that he would not have received as an ordinary constituent. I just don’t believe in that, and I can say that never, while I have been in the Senate of the United States, as far as the people that contributed to this fund are concerned, have I made a telephone call for them to an agency, or have I gone down to an agency on their behalf. And the records will show that, the records which are in the hands of the administration. Well, then, some of you will say, and rightly, “Well, what did you use the fund for, Senator? Why did you have to have it?” Let me tell you in just a word how a Senate office operates. First of all, the Senator gets $15,000 a year in salary. He gets enough money to pay for one trip a year, a round trip, that is, for himself, and his family between his home and Washington, D.C. and then he gets an allowance to handle the people that work in his office to handle his mail. And the allowance for my State of California, is enough to hire 13 people. And let me say, incidentally, that this allowance is not paid to the Senator. It is paid directly to the individuals, that the Senator puts on his payroll, but all of these people and all of these allowances are for strictly official business; business, for example, when a constituent writes in and wants you to go down to the Veteran’s Administration and get some information about his GI policy – items of that type for example. But there are other expenses which are not covered by the Government. And I think I can best discuss those expenses by asking you some questions. Do you think that when I or any other senator makes a political speech, has it printed, should charge the printing of that speech and the mailing of that speech to the taxpayers? Do you think, for example, when I or any other Senator makes a trip to his home State to make a purely political speech that the cost of that trip should be charged to the taxpayers? Do you think when a Senator makes political broadcasts or political television broadcasts, radio or television that the expense of those broadcasts should be charged to the taxpayers? I know what your answer is: It is the same answer that audiences give me whenever I discuss this particular problem. The answer is no. The taxpayers should not be required to finance items which are not official business but which are primarily political business.

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Well, then the question arises, you say, “Well, how do you pay for these and how can you do it legally?” And there are several ways, that it can be done, incidentally, and that it is done legally in the United States Senate and in the Congress. The first way is to be a rich man. I don’t happen to be a rich man, so I couldn’t use that. Another way that is used is to put your wife on the payroll. Let me say, incidentally, that my opponent, my opposite number for the Vice Presidency on the Democratic ticket, does have his wife on the payroll and has had her on his pay roll for the past ten years. Now just let me say this: That is his business, and I am not critical of him for doing that. You will have to pass judgment on that particular point, but I have never done that for this reason: I have found that there are so many deserving stenographers and secretaries in Washington that needed the work that I just didn’t feel it was right to put my wife on the pay roll – my wife sitting over there. She is a wonderful stenographer. She used to teach stenography and she used to teach shorthand in high school. That was when I met her. And I can tell you folks that she has worked many hours on Saturdays and Sundays in my office, and she has done a fine job. And I am proud to say tonight that in the six years I have been in the Senate of the United States Pat Nixon has never been on the Government pay roll. What are the other ways that these finances can be taken care of? Some who are lawyers, and I happen to be a lawyer, continue to practice law, but I haven’t been able to do that. I am so far away from California and I have been so busy with my senatorial work that I have not engaged in any legal practice, and, also, as far as law practice is concerned, it seemed to me that the relationship between an attorney and the client was so personal that you couldn’t possibly represent a man as an attorney and then have an unbiased view when he presented his case to you in the event that he had one before the Government. And so I felt that the best way to handle these necessary political expenses of getting my message to the American people and the speeches I made – the speeches I had printed for the most part concerned this one message of exposing this Administration, the Communism in it, the corruption in it – the only way that I could do that was to accept the aid which people in my home State of California, who contributed to my campaign and who continued to make these contributions after I was elected, were glad to make. And let me say that I am proud of the fact that not one of them has ever asked me for a special favor. I am proud of the fact that not one of them has ever asked me to vote on a bill other than my own conscience would dictate. And I am proud of the fact that the taxpayers by subterfuge or otherwise have never paid one dime for expenses which I thought were political and should not be charged to the taxpayers. Let me say, incidentally, that some of you may say, “Well, that is all right, Senator, that is your explanation, but have you got any proof?” And I would like to tell you this evening that just an hour ago we received an independent audit of this entire fund. I suggested to Governor Sherman Adams, who is the chief of staff of the Dwight Eisenhower campaign, that an independent audit and legal report be obtained, and I have that audit in my hand. It is an audit made by Price Waterhouse & Co. firm, and the legal opinion by Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher, lawyers in Los Angeles – the biggest law firm, and incidentally, one of the best ones in Los Angeles.

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I am proud to be able to report to you tonight that this audit and legal opinion is being forwarded to General Eisenhower, and I’d like to read to you the opinion that was prepared by Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher, based on all the pertinent laws, and statutes, together with the audit report prepared by the certified public accountants. “It is our conclusion that Senator Nixon did not obtain any financial gain from the collection and disbursement of the fund by Dana Smith; that Senator Nixon did not violate any federal or state law by reason of the operation of the fund; and that neither the portion of the fund paid by Dana Smith directly to third persons, nor the portion paid to Senator Nixon, to reimburse him for designated office expenses, constituted income to the senator in a sense which was either reportable or taxable as income under applicable tax laws. (signed) Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher, by Elmo H. Conley” Now that my friends is not Nixon speaking, but it is an independent audit which was requested because I want the American people to know all the facts and I am not afraid of having independent people go in and check the facts. And that is exactly what they did. But then I realized that there are still some who may say, and rightly so – and let me say that I recognize that some will continue to smear regardless of what the truth may be – but that there has been understandably, some honest misunderstanding on this matter, and there are some that will say, “well, maybe you were able, Senator, to fake this thing. How can we believe what you say – after all, is there a possibility that maybe you got some sums in cash? Is there a possibility that you might have feathered your own nest?” And so now, what I am going to do – and incidentally this is unprecedented in the history of American politics – I am going at this time to give to this television and radio audience, a complete financial history, everything I have earned, everything I have spent and everything I own, and I want you to know the facts. I will have to start early. I was born in 1913. Our family was one of modest circumstances, and most of my early life was spent in a store out in East Whittier. It was a grocery store, one of those family enterprises. The only reason we were able to make it go was because my mother and dad had five boys, and we all worked in the store. I worked my way through college, and, to a great extent, through law school. And then in 1940, probably the best thing that ever happened to me happened. I married Pat who is sitting over here. We had a rather difficult time after we were married, like so many of the young couples who may be listening to us. I practiced law. She continued to teach school. Then, in 1942, I went into the service. Let me say that my service record was not a particularly unusual one. I went to the South Pacific. I guess I’m entitled to a couple of battle stars. I got a couple of letters of commendation. But I was just there when the bombs were falling. And then I returned. I returned to the United States, and in 1946, I ran for Congress. When we came out of the war – Pat and I – Pat during the war had worked as a stenographer, and in a bank, and as an economist for a Government agency – and when we came out, the total of our savings, from both my law practice, her teaching, and all the time I was in the war, the total for that entire period was just

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a little less than $10,000. Every cent of that, incidentally, was in Government bonds. Well, that’s where we start, when I go into politics. Now, what have I earned since I went into politics – well, here it is. I jotted it down. Let me read the notes. First of all, I have had my salary as a Congressman and as a Senator. Second, I have received a total in this past six years of $1,600 from estates which were in my law firm at the time that I severed my connection with it. And, incidentally, as I said before, I have not engaged in any legal practice, and have not accepted any fees from business that came into the firm after I went into politics. I have made an average of approximately $1,500 a year from nonpolitical speaking engagements and lectures. And then, fortunately, we’ve inherited a little money. Pat sold her interest in her father’s estate for $3,000, and I inherited $1,500 from my grandfather. We lived rather modestly. For four years we lived in an apartment in Park Fairfax, Alexandria, Virginia. The rent was $80 a month. And we saved for a time when we could buy a house. Now that was what we took in. What did we do with this money? What do we have today to show for it? This will surprise you because it is so little, I suppose, as standards generally go of people in public life. First of all, we’ve got a house in Washington, which cost $41,000 and on which we owe $20,000. We have a house in Whittier, California which cost $13,000 and on which we owe $3,000. My folks are living there at the present time. I have just $4,000 in life insurance, plus my GI policy which I have never been able to convert, and which will run out in two years. I have no life insurance whatever on Pat. I have no life insurance on our two youngsters Patricia and Julie. I own a 1950 Oldsmobile car. We have our furniture. we have no stocks and bonds of any type. We have no interest of any kind, direct or indirect, in any business. Now that’s what we have. What do we owe? Well, in addition to the mortgages, the $20,000 mortgage on the house in Washington and the $10,000 mortgage on the house in Whittier, I owe $4,500 to the Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C. with an interest at 4.5 percent. I owe $3,500 to my parents, and the interest on that loan, which I pay regularly, because it is a part of the savings they made through the years they were working so hard – I pay regularly 4 percent interest. And then I have a $500 loan, which I have on my life insurance. Well, that’s about it. That’s what we have. And that’s what we owe. It isn’t very much. But Pat and I have the satisfaction that every dime that we have got is honestly ours. I should say this, that Pat doesn’t have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat, and I always tell her she would look good in anything. One other thing I should probably tell you, because if I don’t they will probably be saying this about me, too. We did get something, a gift, after the election. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention that our two youngsters would like to have a dog, and, believe it or not, the day we left before this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore, saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was?

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It was a little cocker spaniel dog, in a crate that he had sent all the way from Texas, black and white, spotted, and our little girl Tricia, the six-year-old, named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, loved the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it. It isn’t easy to come before a nation-wide audience and bare your life, as I have done. But I want to say some things before I conclude, that I think most of you will agree on. Mr. Mitchell, the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, made this statement that if a man couldn’t afford to be in the United States Senate, he shouldn’t run for senate. And I just want to make my position clear. I don’t agree with Mr. Mitchell when he says that only a rich man should serve his Government in the United States Senate or Congress. I don’t believe that represents the thinking of the Democratic Party, and I know it doesn’t represent the thinking of the Republican Party. I believe that it’s fine that a man like Governor Stevenson, who inherited a fortune from his father, can run for President. But I also feel that it is essential in this country of ours that a man of modest means can also run for President, because, you know – remember Abraham Lincoln – you remember what he said – “God must have loved the common people, he made so many of them.” And now I’m going to suggest some courses of conduct. First of all, you have read in the papers about other funds, now, Mr. Stevenson apparently had a couple. One of them in which a group of business people paid and helped to supplement the salaries of State employees. Here is where the money went directly into their pockets, and I think that what Mr. Stevenson should do should be to come before the American people, as I have, give the names of the people that contributed to that fund, give the names of the people who put this money into their pockets, at the same time that they were receiving money from their State government and see what favors, if any, they gave out for that. I don’t condemn Mr. Stevenson for what he did, but until the facts are in there is a doubt that would be raised. And as far as Mr. Sparkman is concerned, I would suggest the same thing. He’s had his wife on the pay roll. I don’t condemn him for that, but I think that he should come before the American people and indicate what outside sources of income he has had. I would suggest that under the circumstances both Mr. Sparkman and Mr. Stevenson should come before the American people, as I have, and make a complete financial statement as to their financial history, and if they don’t it will be an admission that they have something to hide. And I think you will agree with me. Because, folks, remember, a man that’s to be President of the United States, a man that’s to be Vice President of the United States, must have the confidence of all the people. And that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing, and that is why I suggest that Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Sparkman, if they are under attack, that should be what they are doing. Now let me say this: I know this is not the last of the smears. In spite of my explanation tonight, other smears will be made. Others have been made in the past. And the purpose of the smears, I know, is this: to silence me, to make me let up. Well, they just don’t know who they are dealing with. I’m going to tell you this: I  remember in the dark days of the Hiss case some of the same columnists, some of the same radio commentators who are attacking me now and misrepresenting my position, were violently opposing me at the time I was after Alger Hiss. But I continued to fight because I knew I was right, and I can say to this great television

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and radio audience that I have no apologies to the American people for my part in putting Alger Hiss where he is today. And as far as this is concerned, I intend to continue to fight. Why do I feel so deeply? Why do I feel that in spite of the smears, the misunderstanding, the necessity for a man to come up here and bare his soul as I have? Why is it necessary for me to continue this fight? And I want to tell you why. Because, you see, I love my country. And I think my country is in danger. And I think the only man that can save America at this time is the man that’s running for President, on my ticket, Dwight Eisenhower. You say, why do I think it is in danger? And I say look at the record. Seven years of the Truman-Acheson Administration, and what’s happened? Six hundred million people lost to Communists. And a war in Korea in which we have lost 117,000 American casualties, and I say to all of you that a policy that results in a loss of six hundred million people to the Communists and a war which cost us 117,000 American casualties isn’t good enough for America. And I say those in the State Department that made the mistakes which caused that war, and which resulted in those losses should be kicked out of the State Department just as fast as we can get them out of there. And let me say that I know Mr. Stevenson won’t do that because he defends the Truman policy, and I know that Dwight Eisenhower will do that, and that he will give America the leadership that it needs. Take the problem of corruption. You have read about the mess in Washington. Mr.  Stevenson can’t clean it up because he was picked by the man, Truman under whose Administration the mess was made. You wouldn’t trust the man who made the mess to clean it up. That is Truman. And by the same token you can’t trust the man who was picked by the man who made the mess to clean it up and that’s Stevenson. And so I say, Eisenhower who owes nothing to Truman, nothing to the big city bosses – he is the man who can clean up the mess in Washington. Take Communism. I say as far as that subject is concerned the danger is greater to America. In the Hiss case they got the secrets which enabled them to break the American secret State Department code. They got secrets in the atomic-bomb case which enabled them to get the secret of the atomic bomb five years before they would have gotten it by their own devices. And I say that any man who called the Alger Hiss case a red herring isn’t fit to be President of the United States. I say that a man who, like Mr. Stevenson, has pooh-poohed and ridiculed the Communist threat in the United States – he said that they are phantoms among ourselves – he has accused us, who have attempted to expose the Communists, of looking for Communists in the Bureau of Fisheries and Wildlife. I say that a man who says that isn’t qualified to be President of the United States. And I say that the only man who can lead us into this fight to rid the Government of both those who are Communists and those who have corrupted this Government is Eisenhower, because General Eisenhower, you can be sure, recognizes the problem, and he knows how to deal with it. Let me say this, finally. This evening I want to read to you just briefly excerpts from a letter that I received, a letter which after all this is over no one can take away from us. It reads as follows:

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Dear Senator Nixon, Since I am only 19 years of age, I can’t vote in this presidential election, but believe me if I could you and General Eisenhower would certainly get my vote. My husband is in the Fleet Marines in Korea. He is a corpsman in the front lines, and we have a twomonth-old son he has never seen. And I feel confident that with great Americans like you and General Eisenhower in the White House, lonely Americans like myself will be united with their loved ones now in Korea. I only pray to God that you won’t be too late. Enclosed is a small check to help you with your campaign. Living on $85 a month it is all I can afford at present, but let me know what else I can do.” Folks, it is a check for $10, and it’s one that I shall never cash. And let me just say this: We hear a lot about prosperity these days, but I say why can’t we have prosperity built on peace, rather than prosperity built on war? Why can’t we have prosperity and an honest Government in Washington, D.C., at the same time? Believe me, we can. And Eisenhower is the man that can lead the crusade to bring us that kind of prosperity. And now, finally, I know that you wonder whether or not I am going to stay on the Republican ticket or resign. Let me say this: I don’t believe that I ought to quit, because I am not a quitter. And, incidentally, Pat is not a quitter. After all, her name is Patricia Ryan and she was born on St. Patrick’s day, and you know the Irish never quit. But the decision, my friends, is not mine. I would do nothing that would harm the possibilities of Dwight Eisenhower to become President of the United States. And for that reason I am submitting to the Republican National Committee tonight through this television broadcast the decision which it is theirs to make. Let them decide whether my position on the ticket will help or hurt. And I am going to ask you to help them decide. Wire and write the Republican National Committee whether you think I should stay on or whether I should get off. And whatever their decision, I will abide by it. But let me just say this last word. Regardless of what happens, I am going to continue this fight. I am going to campaign up and down America until we drive the crooks and the Communists and those that defend them out of Washington. And remember folks, Eisenhower is a great man. Folks, he is a great man, and a vote for Eisenhower is a vote for what is good for America.

3.  Douglas MacArthur, “West Point Address” (May 12, 1962) 5 General Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) led the US victories in the Pacific Theater in the Second World War, received Japan’s surrender aboard the USS Missouri, and continued to shape US policies in the Far East before he was dismissed by President Truman in 1951. Here at his alma mater, West Point, he gives what has been called one of the most famous speeches in American military history. 5

Source: National Center for Public Policy Research, https://nationalcenter.org/ncppr/2001/11/04/ general-douglas-macarthurs-farewell-speech-to-west-point-1962.

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General Westmoreland, General Groves, Distinguished Guests, and Gentlemen of the Corps, As I was leaving the hotel this morning, a doorman asked me, “Where are you bound for, General?” and when I replied, “West Point,” he remarked, “Beautiful place: have you ever been there before?” [Laughter] No human being could fail to be deeply moved by such a tribute as this, coming from a profession I have served so long and a people I have loved so well. It fills me with an emotion I cannot express. But this award is not intended primarily to honor a personality, but to symbolize a great moral code – the code of conduct and chivalry of those who guard this beloved land of culture and ancient descent. That is the animation of this medallion. For all eyes and for all time, it is an expression of the ethics of the American soldier. That I should be integrated in this way with so noble an ideal, arouses a sense of pride and yet of humility which will be with me always. “Duty, Honor, Country” – those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all what they mean. The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker – and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule. But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation’s defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid. They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for action; not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength. They give you a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman. And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory? Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American man at arms. My estimate of him was formed on the battlefield many, many years ago, and has never changed. I regarded him then, as I regard him now, as one of the world’s noblest figures; not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless. His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give. He needs no eulogy

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from me, or from any other man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy’s breast. But when I think of his patience under adversity, of his courage under fire, and of his modesty in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I cannot put into words. He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements. In twenty campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of his people. From one end of the world to the other, he has drained deep the chalice of courage. As I listened to those songs, in memory’s eye I could see those staggering columns of the First World War, bending under soggy packs on many a weary march, from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle-deep through the mire of shell-pocked roads, to form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many, to the judgment seat of God. I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory. Always for them: Duty, Honor, Country. Always their blood, and sweat, and tears, as we sought the way and the light and the truth. And twenty years after, on the other side of the globe, again the filth of murky foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts, those broiling suns of relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storms, the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails, the bitterness of long separation of those they loved and cherished, the deadly pestilence of tropical disease, the horror of stricken areas of war. Their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their indomitable purpose, their complete and decisive victory – always for victory, always through the bloody haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men, reverently following your password of Duty, Honor, Country. The code which those words perpetuate embraces the highest moral law and will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promoted for the uplift of mankind. Its requirements are for the things that are right, and its restraints are from the things that are wrong. The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training: sacrifice. In battle and in the face of danger and death, he disposes those divine attributes which his Maker gave when he created man in His own image. No physical courage and no brute instinct can take the place of the divine help which alone can sustain him. However hard the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind. You now face a new world, a world of change. The thrust into outer space of the satellite spheres and missiles mark a beginning of another epoch in the long story of mankind. In the five or more billions of years the scientists tell us it has taken to form the earth, in the three or more billion years of development of the human race, there has never been a more abrupt or staggering evolution. We deal now, not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier. We speak in strange terms: of harnessing the cosmic energy; of making winds and tides

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work for us; of creating unheard synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our old standard basics; to purify sea water for our drink; of mining the ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundreds of years; of controlling the weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of spaceships to the Moon; of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations; of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy; of such dreams and fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all time. And through all this welter of change and development your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable. It is to win our wars. Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purposes, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishment; but you are the ones who are trained to fight. Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory, that if you lose, the Nation will be destroyed, that the very obsession of your public service must be Duty, Honor, Country. Others will debate the controversial issues, national and international, which divide men’s minds. But serene, calm, aloof, you stand as the Nation’s war guardians, as its lifeguards from the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiators in the arena of battle. For a century and a half you have defended, guarded and protected its hallowed traditions of liberty and freedom, of right and justice. Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of government: whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing indulged in too long, by federal paternalism grown too mighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as firm and complete as they should be. These great national problems are not for your professional participation or military solution. Your guidepost stands out like a tenfold beacon in the night: Duty, Honor, Country. You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense. From your ranks come the great captains who hold the Nation’s destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds. The Long Gray Line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country. This does not mean that you are warmongers. On the contrary, the soldier above all other people prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers: “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished – tone and tint. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen then, but with thirsty ear, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory always I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country.

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Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know that when I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts will be of the Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps. I bid you farewell.

4.  Barack Obama, “A More Perfect Union” (March 18, 2008) 6 In the course of contending to become the nominee of the Democratic party for president, against his chief rival Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama faced a crisis that threatened to derail his entire campaign. Audio and video recordings of his long-time pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Jeremiah Wright, began to surface in which he made remarks about the terrorist attacks on the United States (“America’s chickens are coming home to roost”) and race relations that proved deeply controversial. To what extent did Obama share those views? The following speech is Obama’s response both to the immediate controversy and, more broadly, to his understanding of the current state of race relations in the U.S. “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.” Two hundred and twenty-one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787. The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations. Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time. And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk – to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time. This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of 6

Source: Obamaspeeches.com, http://obamaspeeches.com/E05-Barack-Obama-A-More-PerfectUnion-the-Race-Speech-Philadelphia-PA-March-18-2008.htm.

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our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren. This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story. I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slave-owners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible. It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one. Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans. This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well. And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn. On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike. I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed. But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice.

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Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam. As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all. Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and YouTube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way. But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS. In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity: “People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters …. And in that single note—hope!—I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories—of survival, and freedom, and hope—became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about … memories that all people might study and cherish—and with which we could start to rebuild.” That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety: the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

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And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years. I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love. Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deepseated racial bias. But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality. The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American. Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students. Legalized discrimination – where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

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A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us. This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them. But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings. And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races. In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most workingand middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time. Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at

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least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism. Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding. This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own. But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union. For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs – to the larger aspirations of all Americans – the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who’s been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for our own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny. Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of selfhelp found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change. The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old – is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know – what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow. In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination – and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past – are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our

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civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper. In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well. For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina – or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies. We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change. That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time. This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together. This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit. This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned. I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what

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gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election. There is one story in particular that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta. There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there. And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom. She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat. She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too. Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice. Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.” “I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children. But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

Logos or Argument 1. Aristotle,

art of rhetoric

2.18–20 (excerpts)

Book 2, Chapter 18 Now since […] the end pertaining to each kind of speech is different, and since the opinions and premises concerning quite all of them have been grasped, from which people derive the modes of persuasion they use when they advise and demonstrate and

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dispute, and from which, furthermore, it is possible to fashion speeches bound up with matters of character; and since what concerns these too has been defined, it remains for us to go through the points common [to the various ends of rhetoric]. For all must of necessity make use in their speeches also of what pertains to the possible and the impossible, and some speakers must try to point out that something will be, others that something has already happened. And further, a common point belonging to quite all speeches concerns greatness [or the importance of something], since all make use of downplaying and amplifying when they advise or dissuade, and praise or blame, and accuse or defend. […] Chapter 19 Let us speak first, then, about possible and impossible. So if it is possible for one of two opposites to be or to come to be, then it would seem to be possible also for the other one to do so – for example, if it is possible for a human being to be made healthy, it is possible also for him to be made sick. For the same capacity7 belongs to opposites in the respect in which they are opposites. And if it is possible for one of two like things [to be or to come to be], then so also is it possible for the other. And if it is possible for the more difficult, it is possible also for the easier. […] And if something is possible for the worse and weaker and more foolish, it is all the more so for their opposites, just as Isocrates said that it is a terrible thing if he himself will be unable to figure out something, when Euthynus [a fool] learned it. […] One must examine whether something has or has not happened on the basis of the following points. First, if something that is less inclined by nature to come to be, does come to be, then that which is more inclined to do so would also have come to be. And if what is accustomed to coming into being has subsequently come to be, then that which precedes it has also come to be – for example, if someone has forgotten something, then he also learned this very thing at some point. And if it was possible for someone to do something and he wished to do it, then he did it; whenever the thing that people wish to do is possible for them, they all do it, since there are no impediments thereto. […] What will be in the future, too, is clear on the basis of the same things. For what is in one’s power and wished for will be; and those things will be for which there is the relevant desire or anger or calculation, together with the requisite power, and so too will all those things that are a part of the impetus of action or are about to act. For in most cases the things that are about to happen, come to pass much more than do those not about to happen. And if all such things as naturally happen prior to something else have themselves happened, [then the something else in question naturally happens too] – for example, if it is overcast it is likely to rain. Chapter 20 [On the use of examples, including fables, in rhetoric] Comparison is characteristic of Socratic speeches. For example, if someone should say that those who hold office ought not to be chosen by lot, for maintaining that is similar to somebody’s saying that one should appoint as athletes, not those who are capable of competing, but those whom the lot determines, or that one should appoint by lot anyone at all among the sailors 7

The term for “capacity” (or “power,” “potentiality”) is dunamis, which has the same root as the terms for “possible” (dunatos) and “impossible” (adunatos).

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to pilot the ship, on the grounds that the one on whom the lot falls, but not the person possessed of the requisite knowledge, must pilot. […] And Aesop, when serving in Samos as advocate for a demagogue who was on trial for his life, said: “a fox, while crossing a river, was driven back into a crevice of the riverbank and, being unable to get free, suffered badly for a long time, with many dogticks clinging to her. A hedgehog, in his wanderings, felt compassion when he saw her and asked if he could remove the dog-ticks from her. But the fox did not allow him to do so and, when asked why, replied: ‘these ticks are already full of me and so draw little blood. If you remove them, others will come along who, in their hunger, will drain from me the blood that remains.’ But, men of Samos,” Aesop said, “this fellow here will do no further harm to you (for he is now rich), and if you kill him, others who are poor will come along to steal your public funds and spend them.” These fables are characteristic of the public assembly, and they have this that is good about them, namely, that while it is difficult to discover past events similar to the matters now at hand, it is easier to find fables. For one must make them up just as one does comparisons, if one is capable of seeing the point of similarity in question, which is in fact easier to do on the basis of philosophy. It is easier, then, to supply oneself with examples from fables, but for the purpose of deliberation, those that involve factual matters are more useful, since for the most part the things that will happen in the future are similar to those that have happened in the past.

2.  Shakespeare, Brutus’ Speech, 3.2.13–65 8

julius caesar

After the assassination of Julius Caesar, Brutus supports a public funeral for Caesar and allows Caesar’s close political friend, Mark Antony, to give a speech in honor of his fallen friend. In Shakespeare’s recreation of the events, Brutus takes the precaution of first giving a speech to the people explaining that he killed Caesar, whom he loved, for the sake of Rome. Brutus’ speech is relatively brief and it is written in prose, whereas Antony’s speech that follows it is long and poetic. Brutus:  Be patient till the last. Romans, countrymen, and lovers! hear me for my cause, and be silent, that you may hear: believe me for mine honour, and have respect to mine honour, that you may believe: censure me in your wisdom, and awake your senses, that you may the better judge. If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar’s, to him I say, that Brutus’ love to Caesar was no less than his. If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer: Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more. Had you rather Caesar were living and die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live all free men? As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honour him: but, as he was ambitious, I slew him. There is tears for his love; joy for his fortune; honour for his 8

Source: Open Source Shakespeare, www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view .php?WorkID=juliuscaesar&Act=3&Scene=2&Scope=scene.

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valour; and death for his ambition. Who is here so base that would be a bondman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so rude that would not be a Roman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have I offended. I pause for a reply. All:  None, Brutus, none. Brutus:  Then none have I offended. I have done no more to Caesar than you shall do to Brutus. The question of his death is enrolled in the Capitol; his glory not extenuated, wherein he was worthy, nor his offences enforced, for which he suffered death. [Enter ANTONY and others, with CAESAR’s body] Here comes his body, mourned by Mark Antony: who, though he had no hand in his death, shall receive the benefit of his dying, a place in the commonwealth; as which of you shall not? With this I depart, – that, as I slew my best lover for the good of Rome, I have the same dagger for myself, when it shall please my country to need my death. All:  Live, Brutus! live, live! First Citizen:  Bring him with triumph home unto his house. Second Citizen:  Give him a statue with his ancestors. Third Citizen:  Let him be Caesar. Fourth Citizen:  Caesar’s better parts Shall be crown’d in Brutus. First Citizen:  We’ll bring him to his house With shouts and clamours. Brutus:  My countrymen, Second Citizen:  Peace, silence! Brutus speaks. First Citizen:  Peace, ho! Brutus:  Good countrymen, let me depart alone, And, for my sake, stay here with Antony: Do grace to Caesar’s corpse, and grace his speech Tending to Caesar’s glories; which Mark Antony, By our permission, is allow’d to make. I do entreat you, not a man depart, Save I alone, till Antony have spoke. [Exit]

3.  Frederick Douglass, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” (excerpts) (July 5, 1852) 9 Frederick Douglass (1817–95), who was born into slavery before fleeing North in 1838, gave the following speech at the newly constructed Corinthian Hall in Rochester, ny at a time when the nation was being torn apart over the issue of slavery. The speech – the greatest he ever delivered according to biographer David W. Blight – also helped save Douglass’s newspaper, The North Star. 9

Source: Fredrick Douglass, Oration, Delivered in Corinthian Hall (Rochester: Lee, Mann & Co., 1852).

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[…] Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too, great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory. […] Fellow citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us? Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold, that a nation’s sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation’s jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the “lame man leap as an hart.” But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people! “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.” Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason

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most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave’s point of view. Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery, the great sin and shame of America! “I will not equivocate; I will not excuse”; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just. But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, “It is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less; would you persuade more, and rebuke less; your cause would be much more likely to succeed.” But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man! For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian’s God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!

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Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him. What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply. What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is passed. At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy – a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour. Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival. […] Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license,

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nor sanction of the hateful thing; but interpreted, as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? it is neither. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it. What would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a track of land, in which no mention of land was made? […] Now, take the constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery. […] Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are distinctly heard on the other. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, “Let there be Light,” has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. “Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God.” In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it: God speed the year of jubilee The wide world o’er! When from their galling chains set free, Th’ oppress’d shall vilely bend the knee, And wear the yoke of tyranny Like brutes no more. That year will come, and freedom’s reign, To man his plundered rights again

The Modes of Persuasion: Ethos, Pathos, Logos Restore. God speed the day when human blood Shall cease to flow! In every clime be understood, The claims of human brotherhood, And each return for evil, good, Not blow for blow; That day will come all feuds to end, And change into a faithful friend Each foe. God speed the hour, the glorious hour, When none on earth Shall exercise a lordly power, Nor in a tyrant’s presence cower; But to all manhood’s stature tower, By equal birth! That hour will come, to each, to all, And from his Prison-house, to thrall Go forth. Until that year, day, hour, arrive, With head, and heart, and hand I’ll strive, To break the rod, and rend the gyve, The spoiler of his prey deprive— So witness Heaven! And never from my chosen post, Whate’er the peril or the cost, Be driven.

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1. Aristotle,

art of rhetoric

3.1–2 (excerpts)

Book 3, Chapter 1 Speaking about what concerns diction follows next. For being in possession of the points one must say is not sufficient; rather, it is necessary [to know] also how one must say them, and this contributes much to making the speech appear to be of a given character. […] Chapter 2 Let a virtue of diction be defined as clarity, for argument or speech is a sort of sign, such that if it is not clear, it will not perform the task that is its own; and let the diction [proper to rhetoric] be neither humble nor above the worth [of the subject matter in question] but appropriate to it. For poetic diction may not be humble, but neither is it appropriate for a speech. In the case of nouns and verbs, the terms in their prevailing senses make for clarity, whereas all those other nouns spoken of in the Poetics render the diction, not humble, but ornate, since departing from [ordinary words] makes [the writing] appear more august. […] Hence the writers [of speeches] should go unnoticed [by the audience] and be held to be speaking, not artificially, but naturally (since this latter is persuasive, the former the opposite: people are suspicious of [those who employ such artifice] as of those who are hatching a plot, just as they are suspicious also of wines that have been adulterated). And as an example, there is the affect of Theodorus’ voice in comparison to the voices of the other actors, for his seems to belong to the [character] speaking, whereas the others’ seem to belong to others. He conceals something well, whoever composes by selecting from the customary language of conversation, which is in fact what Euripides does and what he first showed the way toward. […] Now since the speech is composed of nouns and verbs […] those words that are of a special dialect [or are unusual], compound words, and made-up words, one must use only rarely and in few places […]: otherwise one departs from what is fitting in the direction of what is too grand. But the prevailing [sense of a term] and the term that 144

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belongs properly to a thing, and metaphor, alone are useful for the diction belonging to prose speeches. A sign of this is that all make use of only these, for everyone engages in conversation by using metaphors, terms that properly belong to the thing, and terms in their prevailing sense. It is clear as a result that if someone composes [a speech] well, there will be something of a foreign character to it, and [yet] this admits of going unnoticed, and [his meaning] will in fact be clear. And [such clarity] is, as we saw, the virtue of rhetorical speech. […] One should state both epithets and metaphors in a fitting way, and this will proceed from the proportion [or analogy] involved. Otherwise, the inappropriateness will be apparent because things that are in opposition will be especially apparent when set sideby-side. But one must examine what is fitting for an old man in the way that the scarlet cloak is appropriate for the young, for the same clothing is not suitable [for both]. And if you want to adorn [someone], you must apply the metaphor derived from the better things that belong to the same genus, and if to blame [someone], from those that are worse. I mean, for example – since opposites fall in the same genus – asserting that he who begs “prays” and that he who prays “begs” is to compose [in the way] described, because both begging and praying are solicitations [but are the opposites of one another in what they connote]. […] And one [may call actors] “Dionysus-flatterers,” but they call themselves “skilled artisans.” These are both metaphors, the one disparaging, the other the opposite. And pirates nowadays call themselves “suppliers.” Hence it is possible to say that someone who has committed an injustice “makes a mistake,” and that one who makes a mistake “commits an injustice,” and that someone who stole something both “gained possession of it” and “supplied himself” with it […] It is not as [the sophist] Bryson contended, that there is no ugly speech, if in fact saying this instead of that signifies the same thing. This is false: one word is more prevalent than another and bears a greater similarity [to the thing referred to] and is more appropriate for making the thing appear before one’s eyes. Further, this or that may not signify things in the same state, such that one word must thus be posited as being more beautiful or uglier than another. For both do signify the beautiful or the ugly, but not in the respect in which a given thing is beautiful or ugly; or, if they do this, then they do so in varying degrees, more and less.

2.  Abraham Lincoln, “Temperance Address” (February 22, 1842) Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) gave the following speech at the Second Presbyterian Church, on the 110th anniversary of the birth of George Washington, to the Springfield Washingtonian Temperance Society, a leading organization opposed to the consumption of alcohol.1 Although the Temperance cause has been in progress for near twenty years, it is apparent to all, that it is, just now, being crowned with a degree of success, hitherto unparalleled. 1

Source: Life and Works of Lincoln: Early Speeches, 1832–1856 (New York: Current Literature Publishing, 1907). Repr. by Abraham Lincoln Online, www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/ speeches/temperance.htm#:~:text=When%20the%20conduct%20of%20men,you%20are%20 his%20sincere%20friend.

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The list of its friends is daily swelled by the additions of fifties, of hundreds, and of thousands. The cause itself seems suddenly transformed from a cold abstract theory, to a living, breathing, active, and powerful chieftain, going forth “conquering and to conquer.” The citadels of his great adversary are daily being stormed and dismantled; his temple and his altars, where the rites of his idolatrous worship have long been performed, and where human sacrifices have long been wont to be made, are daily desecrated and deserted. The trump of the conqueror’s fame is sounding from hill to hill, from sea to sea, and from land to land, and calling millions to his standard at a blast. For this new and splendid success, we heartily rejoice. That that success is so much greater now than heretofore, is doubtless owing to rational causes; and if we would have it continue, we shall do well to inquire what those causes are. The warfare heretofore waged against the demon Intemperance, has, somehow or other, been erroneous. Either the champions engaged, or the tactics they adopted have not been the most proper. These champions for the most part have been Preachers, Lawyers, and hired agents. Between these and the mass of mankind, there is a want of approachability, if the term be admissible, partially, at least, fatal to their success. They are supposed to have no sympathy of feeling or interest, with those very persons whom it is their object to convince and persuade. And again, it is so common and so easy to ascribe motives to men of these classes, other than those they profess to act upon. The preacher, it is said, advocates temperance because he is a fanatic, and desires a union of the Church and State; the lawyer, from his pride and vanity of hearing himself speak; and the hired agent, for his salary. But when one, who has long been known as a victim of intemperance bursts the fetters that have bound him, and appears before his neighbors “clothed, and in his right mind,” a redeemed specimen of long-lost humanity, and stands up with tears of joy trembling in his eyes, to tell of the miseries once endured, now to be endured no more forever; of his once naked and starving children, now clad and fed comfortably; of a wife long weighed down with woe, weeping, and a broken heart, now restored to health, happiness, and a renewed affection; and how easily it is all done, once it is resolved to be done; how simple his language, there is a logic, and an eloquence in it, that few, with human feelings, can resist. They cannot say that he desires a union of church and state, for he is not a church member; they cannot say he is vain of hearing himself speak, for his whole demeanor shows he would gladly avoid speaking at all; they cannot say he speaks for pay for he receives none, and asks for none. Nor can his sincerity in any way be doubted; or his sympathy for those he would persuade to imitate his example be denied. In my judgment, it is to the battles of this new class of champions that our late success is greatly, perhaps chiefly, owing. But, had the old school champions themselves, been of the most wise selecting, was their system of tactics, the most judicious? It seems to me, it was not. Too much denunciation against dram sellers and dram drinkers was indulged in. This, I think, was both impolitic and unjust. It was impolitic because it is not much in the nature of man to be driven to anything; still less to be driven about that which is exclusively his own business; and least of all, where such driving is to be submitted to, at the expense of pecuniary interest, or burning appetite. When the dram-seller and drinker, were incessantly told, not in accents of entreaty and persuasion, diffidently addressed by erring man to an erring brother; but in the thundering tones of anathema and denunciation, with which the lordly Judge often

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groups together all the crimes of the felon’s life, and thrusts them in his face just ere he passes sentence of death upon him, that they were the authors of all the vice and misery and crime in the land; that they were the manufacturers and material of all the thieves and robbers and murderers that infested the earth; that their houses were the workshops of the devil; and that their persons should be shunned by all the good and virtuous, as moral pestilences – I say, when they were told all this, and in this way, it is not wonderful that they were slow, very slow, to acknowledge the truth of such denunciations, and to join the ranks of their denouncers in a hue and cry against themselves. To have expected them to do otherwise than they did – to have expected them not to meet denunciation with denunciation, crimination with crimination, and anathema with anathema, was to expect a reversal of human nature, which is God’s decree, and never can be reversed. When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that “a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.” So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great highroad to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause really be a just one. On the contrary, assume to dictate to his judgment, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart; and though your cause be naked truth itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel, and sharper than steel can be made, and though you throw it with more than Herculean force and precision, you shall be no more be able to pierce him, than to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw. Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his own best interest. On this point, the Washingtonians greatly excel the temperance advocates of former times. Those whom they desire to convince and persuade, are their old friends and companions. They know they are not demons, nor even the worst of men. They know that generally, they are kind, generous, and charitable, even beyond the example of their more staid and sober neighbors. They are practical philanthropists; and they glow with a generous and brotherly zeal, that mere theorizers are incapable of feeling. Benevolence and charity possess their hearts entirely; and out of the abundance of their hearts, their tongues give utterance. “Love through all their actions runs, and all their words are mild.” In this spirit they speak and act, and in the same, they are heard and regarded. And when such is the temper of the advocate, and such of the audience, no good cause can be unsuccessful. But I have said that denunciations against dram-sellers and dram-drinkers are unjust as well as impolitic. Let us see. I have not enquired at what period of time the use of intoxicating drinks commenced; nor is it important to know. It is sufficient that to all of us who now inhabit the world, the practice of drinking them, is just as old as the world itself, – that is, we have seen the one, just as long as we have seen the other. When all such of us, as have now reached the years of maturity, first opened our eyes upon the stage of existence, we found intoxicating liquor, recognized by everybody, used by everybody, and repudiated by nobody. It commonly entered into the first draught of the infant,

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and the last draught of the dying man. From the sideboard of the parson, down to the ragged pocket of the houseless loafer, it was constantly found. Physicians prescribed it in this, that, and the other disease. Government provided it for soldiers and sailors; and to have a rolling or raising, a husking or hoe-down, anywhere about without it, was positively insufferable. So too, it was everywhere a respectable article of manufacture and merchandise. The making of it was regarded as an honorable livelihood; and he who could make most, was the most enterprising and respectable. Large and small manufactories of it were everywhere erected, in which all the earthly goods of their owners were invested. Wagons drew it from town to town – boats bore it from clime to clime, and the winds wafted it from nation to nation; and merchants bought and sold it, by wholesale and retail, with precisely the same feelings, on the part of the seller, buyer, and bystander, as are felt at the selling and buying of flour, beef, bacon, or any other of the real necessaries of life. Universal public opinion not only tolerated, but recognized and adopted its use. It is true, that even then, it was known and acknowledged, that many were greatly injured by it; but none seemed to think the injury arose from the use of a bad thing, but from the abuse of a very good thing. The victims of it were pitied, and compassionated, just as now are the heirs of consumptions, and other hereditary diseases. Their failing was treated as a misfortune, and not as a crime, or even as a disgrace. If, then, what I have been saying be true, is it wonderful, that some should think and act now as all thought and acted twenty years ago? And is it just to assail, contemn, or despise them, for doing so? The universal sense of mankind, on any subject, is an argument, or at least an influence not easily overcome. The success of the argument in favor of the existence of an over-ruling Providence, mainly depends upon that sense; and men ought not, in justice, to be denounced for yielding to it, in any case, or giving it up slowly, especially, where they are backed by interest, fixed habits, or burning appetites. Another error, as it seems to me, into which the old reformers fell, was, the position that all habitual drunkards were utterly incorrigible, and therefore, must be turned adrift, and damned without remedy, in order that the grace of temperance might abound to the temperate then, and to all mankind some hundred years thereafter. There is in this something so repugnant to humanity, so uncharitable, so cold-blooded and feelingless, that it never did, nor ever can enlist the enthusiasm of a popular cause. We could not love the man who taught it – we could not hear him with patience. The heart could not throw open its portals to it. The generous man could not adopt it. It could not mix with his blood. It looked so fiendishly selfish, so like throwing fathers and brothers overboard, to lighten the boat for our security – that the noble minded shrank from the manifest meanness of the thing. And besides this, the benefits of a reformation to be effected by such a system, were too remote in point of time, to warmly engage many in its behalf. Few can be induced to labor exclusively for posterity; and none will do it enthusiastically. Posterity has done nothing for us; and theorize on it as we may, practically we shall do very little for it, unless we are made to think, we are, at the same time, doing something for ourselves. What an ignorance of human nature does it exhibit, to ask or expect a whole community to rise up and labor for the temporal happiness of others after themselves shall be consigned to the dust, a majority of which community take no pains whatever to secure their own eternal welfare, at a no greater distant day? Great distance, in either time or

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space, has wonderful power to lull and render quiescent the human mind. Pleasures to be enjoyed, or pains to be endured, after we shall be dead and gone, are but little regarded, even in our own cases, and much less in the cases of others. Still, in addition to this, there is something so ludicrous in promises of good, or threats of evil, a great way off, as to render the whole subject with which they are connected, easily turned into ridicule. “Better lay down that spade you are stealing, Paddy; – if you don’t you’ll pay for it at the day of judgment.” “Be the powers, if ye’ll credit me so long, I’ll take another, jist.” By the Washingtonians, this system of consigning the habitual drunkard to hopeless ruin, is repudiated. They adopt a more enlarged philanthropy. They go for present as well as future good. They labor for all now living, as well as all hereafter to live. They teach hope to all – despair to none. As applying to their cause, they deny the doctrine of unpardonable sin. As in Christianity it is taught, so in this they teach, that “While the lamp holds out to burn, The vilest sinner may return.” And, what is a matter of more profound gratulation, they, by experiment upon experiment, and example upon example, prove the maxim to be no less true in the one case than in the other. On every hand we behold those, who but yesterday, were the chief of sinners, now the chief apostles of the cause. Drunken devils are cast out by ones, by sevens, and by legions; and their unfortunate victims, like the poor possessed, who was redeemed from his long and lonely wanderings in the tombs, are publishing to the ends of the earth, how great things have been done for them. To these new champions, and this new system of tactics, our late success is mainly owing; and to them we must mainly look for the final consummation. The ball is now rolling gloriously on, and none are so able as they to increase its speed, and its bulk – to add to its momentum, and its magnitude. Even though unlearned in letters, for this task, none are so well educated. To fit them for this work, they have been taught in the true school. They have been in that gulf, from which they would teach others the means of escape. They have passed that prison wall, which others have long declared impassable; and who that has not shall dare to weigh opinions with them, as to the mode of passing. But if it be true, as I have insisted, that those who have suffered by intemperance personally, and have reformed, are the most powerful and efficient instruments to push the reformation to ultimate success, it does not follow, that those who have not suffered, have no part left them to perform. Whether or not the world would be vastly benefitted by a total and final banishment from it of all intoxicating drinks, seems to me not now an open question. Three-fourths of mankind confess the affirmative with their tongues, and, I believe, all the rest acknowledge it in their hearts. Ought any, then, to refuse their aid in doing what the good of the whole demands? Shall he, who cannot do much, be, for that reason, excused if he do nothing? “But,” says one, “what good can I do by signing the pledge? I never drink even without signing.” This question has already been asked and answered more than millions of times. Let it be answered once more. For the man suddenly, or in any other way, to break off from the use of drams, who has indulged in them for a long course of years, and until his appetite for them has become ten or a hundred-fold stronger, and more craving, than any natural appetite can be, requires a most powerful moral effort. In

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such an undertaking, he needs every moral support and influence, that can possibly be brought to his aid, and thrown around him. And not only so; but every moral prop, should be taken from whatever argument might rise in his mind to lure him to his backsliding. When he casts his eyes around him, he should be able to see, all that he respects, all that he admires, and all that [he?] loves, kindly and anxiously pointing him onward; and none beckoning him back, to his former miserable “wallowing in the mire.” But it is said by some, that men will think and act for themselves; that none will disuse spirits or anything else, merely because his neighbors do; and that moral influence is not that powerful engine contended for. Let us examine this. Let me ask the man who could maintain this position most stiffly, what compensation he will accept to go to church some Sunday and sit during the sermon with his wife’s bonnet upon his head? Not a trifle, I’ll venture. And why not? There would be nothing irreligious in it: nothing immoral, nothing uncomfortable. Then why not? Is it not because there would be something egregiously unfashionable in it? Then it is the influence of fashion; and what is the influence of fashion, but the influence that other people’s actions have [on our own] actions, the strong inclination each of us feels to do as we see all our neighbors do? Nor is the influence of fashion confined to any particular thing or class of things. It is just as strong on one subject as another. Let us make it as unfashionable to withhold our names from the temperance cause as for husbands to wear their wives bonnets to church, and instances will be just as rare in the one case as the other. “But,” say some, “we are no drunkards; and we shall not acknowledge ourselves such by joining a reformed drunkard’s society, whatever our influence might be.” Surely no Christian will adhere to this objection. If they believe, as they profess, that Omnipotence condescended to take on himself the form of sinful man, and, as such, to die an ignominious death for their sakes, surely they will not refuse submission to the infinitely lesser condescension, for the temporal, and perhaps eternal salvation, of a large, erring, and unfortunate class of their own fellow creatures. Nor is the condescension very great. In my judgment, such of us as have never fallen victims, have been spared more by the absence of appetite, than from any mental or moral superiority over those who have. Indeed, I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant, and warm-blooded to fall into this vice. The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and of generosity. What one of us but can call to mind some dear relative, more promising in youth than all his fellows, who has fallen a sacrifice to his rapacity? He ever seems to have gone forth, like the Egyptian angel of death, commissioned to slay if not the first, the fairest born of every family. Shall he now be arrested in his desolating career? In that arrest, all can give aid that will; and who shall be excused that can, and will not? Far around as human breath has ever blown, he keeps our fathers, our brothers, our sons, and our friends, prostrate in the chains of moral death. To all the living everywhere we cry, “come sound the moral resurrection trump, that these may rise and stand up, an exceeding great army” – “Come from the four winds, O breath! and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.”2 2

Ezekiel 37:9.

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If the relative grandeur of revolutions shall be estimated by the great amount of human misery they alleviate, and the small amount they inflict, then, indeed, will this be the grandest the world shall ever have seen. Of our political revolution of ’76, we all are justly proud. It has given us a degree of political freedom, far exceeding that of any other nation of the earth. In it the world has found a solution of the long mooted problem, as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it was the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow and expand into the universal liberty of mankind. But with all these glorious results, past, present, and to come, it had its evils too. It breathed forth famine, swam in blood and rode in fire; and long, long after, the orphan’s cry, and the widow’s wail, continued to break the sad silence that ensued. These were the price, the inevitable price, paid for the blessings it bought. Turn now, to the temperance revolution. In it, we shall find a stronger bondage broken; a viler slavery, manumitted; a greater tyrant deposed. In it, more of want supplied, more disease healed, more sorrow assuaged. By it no orphans starving, no widows weeping. By it, none wounded in feeling, none injured in interest. Even the dram-maker, and dram seller, will have glided into other occupations so gradually, as never to have felt the change; and will stand ready to join all others in the universal song of gladness. And what a noble ally this, to the cause of political freedom. With such an aid, its march cannot fail to be on and on, till every son of earth shall drink in rich fruition, the sorrow quenching draughts of perfect liberty. Happy day, when, all appetites controlled, all poisons subdued, all matter subjected, mind, all conquering mind, shall live and move the monarch of the world. Glorious consummation! Hail fall of Fury! Reign of Reason, all hail! And when the victory shall be complete – when there shall be neither a slave nor a drunkard on the earth – how proud the title of that Land, which may truly claim to be the birth-place and the cradle of both those revolutions, that shall have ended in that victory. How nobly distinguished that People, who shall have planted, and nurtured to maturity, both the political and moral freedom of their species. This is the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the birth-day of Washington. We are met to celebrate this day. Washington is the mightiest name of earth – long since mightiest in the cause of civil liberty; still mightiest in moral reformation. On that name, an eulogy is expected. It cannot be. To add brightness to the sun, or glory to the name of Washington, is alike impossible. Let none attempt it. In solemn awe pronounce the name, and in its naked deathless splendor, leave it shining on.

3.  Mark Twain, “Die Schrecken der Deutsche Sprache” [The Horrors of the German Language] (excerpts) (November 21, 1897) 3 Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name, Mark Twain (1835–1910), has often been called the father of American Literature. He had a long-standing interest in the peculiarities of the German language, 3

Source: Humor in America, https://humorinamerica.wordpress.com/2013/09/09/in-the-archivessprachen-studies.

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publishing a humorous essay entitled “The awful German Language” as an appendix to his 1880 travel novel, A Tramp Abroad. The following is Twain’s own literal translation of a lecture that he delivered in perfect German to the Concordia Festkneipe (the Vienna Press Club) in Vienna, Austria on October 31, 1897. It has me deeply touched, my gentlemen, here so hospitably received to be. From colleagues out of my own profession, in this from my own home so far distant land. My heart is full of gratitude, but my poverty of German words forces me to greater economy of expression. Excuse you, my gentlemen, that I read off, what I you say will. [But he didn’t read]. The German language speak I not good, but have numerous connoisseurs me assured that I her write like an angel. Maybe – maybe – I know not. Have till now no acquaintance with the angels had. That comes later – when it the dear God please – it has no hurry. Since long, my gentlemen, have I the passionate longing nursed a speech on German to hold, but one has me not permitted. Men, who no feeling for the art had, laid me ever hindrance in the way and made naught my desire – sometimes by excuses, often by force. Always said these men to me: “Keep you still, your Highness! Silence! For God’s sake seek another way and means yourself obnoxious to make.” In the present case, as usual it is me difficult become, for me the permission to obtain. The committee sorrowed deeply, but could me the permission not grant on account of a law which from the Concordia demands she shall the German language protect. Du liebe Zeit! How so had one to me this say could – might – dared – should? I am indeed the truest friend of the German language – and not only now, but from long since – yes, before twenty years already. And never have I the desire had the noble language to hurt; to the contrary, only wished she to improve – I would her only reform. It is the dream of my life been. I have already visits by the various German governments paid and for contracts prayed. I am now to Austria in the same task come. I would only some changes effect. I would only the language method – the luxurious, elaborate construction compress, the eternal parenthesis suppress, do away with, annihilate; the introduction of more than thirteen subjects in one sentence forbid; the verb so far to the front pull that one it without a telescope discover can. With one word, my gentlemen, I would your beloved language simplify so that, my gentlemen, when you her for prayer need, One her yonder-up understands. I beseech you, from me yourself counsel to let, execute these mentioned reforms. Then will you an elegant language possess, and afterward, when you some thing say will, will you at least yourself understand what you said had. But often nowadays, when you a mile-long sentence from you given and you yourself somewhat have rested, then must you have a touching inquisitiveness have yourself to determine what you actually spoken have. Before several days has the correspondent of a local paper a sentence constructed which hundred and twelve words contain, and therein were seven parentheses smuggled in, and the subject seven times changed. Think you only, my gentlemen, in the course of the voyage of a single sentence must the poor, persecuted, fatigued subject seven times change position! […] Now I my speech execute – no, I would say I bring her to the close. I am a foreigner – but here, under you, have I it entirely forgotten. And so again and yet again proffer I you my heartiest thanks.

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4.  General George S. Patton’s Speech to the Third Army (June 5, 1944) 4 General George Patton (1885–1945) is among the most famous military men the United States has produced. Having previously led American troops in North Africa and in Sicily in WWII, he here encourages men in the United States Third Army stationed in Britain, in what has been described as one of the most rousing military speeches of all time. The Third Army later proved crucial in defeating Hitler’s last major offensive in the Battle of the Bulge in 1945. Be seated. Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones. Second, you are here for your own self-respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men and all real men like to fight. When you, here, every one of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American. You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you right here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Death, in time, comes to all men. Yes, every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he’s not, he’s a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood. Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base. Americans pride themselves on being He Men and they ARE He Men. Remember that the enemy is just as frightened as you are, and probably more so. They are not supermen. All through your Army careers, you men have bitched about what you call ‘chicken shit drilling.’ That, like everything else in this Army, has a definite purpose. That purpose is alertness. Alertness must be bred into every soldier. I don’t give a fuck for a man who’s not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn’t be here. You are ready for what’s to come. A man must be alert at all times if he expects to stay alive. If you’re not alert, sometime, a German son-of-an-asshole-bitch is going to sneak up behind you and beat you to death with a sockful of shit! 4

Source: there is no original manuscript or audio tape of Patton’s speech but there are various reconstructions of the speech based on the recollections of those who heard it. We have used, with the permission of the author, the version prepared by Charles M. Province, Copyright © Charles M. Province, US Army, www.pattonhq.com. See Charles. M Province, The Unknown Patton (Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2019).

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There are four hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily, all because one man went to sleep on the job. But they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before they did. An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is pure horse shit. The bilious bastards who write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don’t know any more about real fighting under fire than they know about fucking! We have the finest food, the finest equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity those poor sons-of-bitches we’re going up against. By God, I do. My men don’t surrender, and I don’t want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he has been hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight back. That’s not just bull shit either. The kind of man that I want in my command is just like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Luger against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the  gun aside with one hand, and busted the hell out of the Kraut with his helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German before they knew what the hell was coming off. And, all of that time, this man had a bullet through a lung. There was a real man! All of the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters, either. Every single man in this Army plays a vital role. Don’t ever let up. Don’t ever think that your job is unimportant. Every man has a job to do and he must do it. Every man is a vital link in the great chain. What if every truck driver suddenly decided that he didn’t like the whine of those shells overhead, turned yellow, and jumped headlong into a ditch? The cowardly bastard could say, ‘Hell, they won’t miss me, just one man in thousands.’ But, what if every man thought that way? Where in the hell would we be now? What would our country, our loved ones, our homes, even the world, be like? No, Goddamnit, Americans don’t think like that. Every man does his job. Every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important in the vast scheme of this war. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns and machinery of war to keep us rolling. The Quartermaster is needed to bring up food and clothes because where we are going there isn’t a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man on K.P. has a job to do, even the one who heats our water to keep us from getting the ‘G.I. Shits.’ Each man must not think only of himself, but also of his buddy fighting beside him. We don’t want yellow cowards in this Army. They should be killed off like rats. If not, they will go home after this war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the Goddamned cowards and we will have a nation of brave men. One of the bravest men that I ever saw was a fellow on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of a furious fire fight in Tunisia. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at a time like that. He answered, ‘Fixing the wire, Sir.’ I asked, ‘Isn’t that a little unhealthy right about now?’ He answered, ‘Yes Sir, but the Goddamned wire has to be fixed.’ I asked, ‘Don’t those planes strafing the road bother you?’ And he answered, ‘No, Sir, but you sure as hell do!’ Now, there was a real man. A real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time, no matter how great the odds. And you should have seen those trucks on the road to Tunisia. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting all around them all of the time. We got through on good old American guts. Many of those men drove for over forty consecutive hours. These men weren’t combat men, but they were soldiers with a job to

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do. They did it, and in one hell of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without team effort, without them, the fight would have been lost. All of the links in the chain pulled together and the chain became unbreakable. Don’t forget, you men don’t know that I’m here. No mention of that fact is to be made in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell happened to me. I’m not supposed to be commanding this Army. I’m not even supposed to be here in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the Goddamned Germans. Someday I want to see them raise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl, ‘Jesus Christ, it’s the Goddamned Third Army again and that son-of-a-fucking-bitch Patton.’ We want to get the hell over there. The quicker we clean up this Goddamned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against the purple pissing Japs and clean out their nest, too. Before the Goddamned Marines get all of the credit. Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin I am personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler. Just like I’d shoot a snake! When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a German will get to him eventually. The hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don’t dig foxholes. I don’t want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don’t give the enemy time to dig one either. We’ll win this war, but we’ll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we’ve got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We’re not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we’re going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We’re going to murder those lousy Hun cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket. War is a bloody, killing business. You’ve got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it’s the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you’ll know what to do! I don’t want to get any messages saying, ‘I am holding my position.’ We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy’s balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn! From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing our people too hard. I don’t give a good Goddamn about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder WE push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that. There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you WON’T have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, ‘Well, your Granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana.’ No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, ‘Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named Georgie Patton!’

Part II POLITICAL RHETORIC IN PRACTICE

5 Civil Rights and Race in the United States

1.  Booker T. Washington, Atlanta Exposition Speech (September 18, 1895) 1 Booker Taliaferro Washington (1856–1915), African-American intellectual and social leader, served as an informal adviser to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt (1901–09) and William Taft (1909–13). Washington gave the following address to a segregated audience at the inauguration of the Cotton States and International Exposition (now the site of Piedmont Park) in Atlanta, Georgia. The speech formed the basis of the “Atlanta compromise,” which granted free vocational education to Blacks in return for giving up the right to vote and to protest segregation. Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Board of Directors and Citizens: One-third of the population of the South is of the Negro race. No enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this section can disregard this element of our population and reach the highest success. I but convey to you, Mr. President and Directors, the sentiment of the masses of my race when I say that in no way have the value and manhood of the American Negro been more fittingly and generously recognized than by the managers of this magnificent Exposition at every stage of its progress. It is a recognition that will do more to cement the friendship of the two races than any occurrence since the dawn of our freedom. Not only this, but the opportunity here afforded will awaken among us a new era of industrial progress. Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the top instead of at the bottom; that a seat in Congress or the state legislature was more sought than real estate or industrial skill; that the political convention or stump speaking had more attractions than starting a dairy farm or truck garden.

1

Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery (New York: Doubleday, 1907).

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A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal, “Water, water; we die of thirst!” The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” A second time the signal, “Water, water; send us water!” ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” And a third and fourth signal for water was answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River. To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say: “Cast down your bucket where you are” – cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded. Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions. And in this connection it is well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro is given a man’s chance in the commercial world, and in nothing is this Exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor, and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities. To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted I would repeat what I say to my own race, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. Cast down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labor wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, built your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, and helped make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South. Casting down your bucket among my people, helping and encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and to education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories. While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen. As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your children, watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one. In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

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There is no defense or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all. If anywhere there are efforts tending to curtail the fullest growth of the Negro, let these efforts be turned into stimulating, encouraging, and making him the most useful and intelligent citizen. Effort or means so invested will pay a thousand per cent interest. These efforts will be twice blessed – “blessing him that gives and him that takes.” There is no escape through law of man or God from the inevitable: That laws of changeless justice bind Oppressor with oppressed; And, close as sin and suffering joined, We march to fate abreast…2 Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load upward, or they will pull against you the load downward. We shall constitute one-third and more of the ignorance and crime of the South, or one-third [of] its intelligence and progress; we shall contribute one-third to the business and industrial prosperity of the South, or we shall prove a veritable body of death, stagnating, depressing, retarding every effort to advance the body politic. Gentlemen of the Exposition, as we present to you our humble effort at an exhibition of our progress, you must not expect overmuch. Starting thirty years ago with ownership here and there in a few quilts and pumpkins and chickens (gathered from miscellaneous sources), remember the path that has led from these to the inventions and production of agricultural implements, buggies, steam-engines, newspapers, books, statuary, carving, paintings, the management of drug stores and banks, has not been trodden without contact with thorns and thistles. While we take pride in what we exhibit as a result of our independent efforts, we do not for a moment forget that our part in this exhibition would fall far short of your expectations but for the constant help that has come to our educational life, not only from the Southern states, but especially from Northern philanthropists, who have made their gifts a constant stream of blessing and encouragement. The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized. It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house. In conclusion, may I repeat that nothing in thirty years has given us more hope and encouragement, and drawn us so near to you of the white race, as this opportunity offered by the Exposition; and here bending, as it were, over the altar that represents the results of the struggles of your race and mine, both starting practically empty-handed three decades ago, I pledge that in your effort to work out the great and intricate problem which God has laid at the doors of the South, you shall have at all times the patient, sympathetic help of my race; only let this be constantly in mind, 2

From “At Port Royal” by John Greenleaf Whittier.

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that, while from representations in these buildings of the product of field, of forest, of mine, of factory, letters, and art, much good will come, yet far above and beyond material benefits will be that higher good, that, let us pray God, will come, in a blotting out of sectional differences and racial animosities and suspicions, in a determination to administer absolute justice, in a willing obedience among all classes to the mandates of law. This, coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into our beloved South a new heaven and a new earth.

2.  W.E.B. Du Bois, “A Negro Nation Within a Negro Nation” (June 26, 1934) 3 W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), the first African-American to earn a doctorate from Harvard, was the author of Black Reconstruction in America (1935) and a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. Du Bois delivered the following speech in New York City upon his resignation from the NAACP. No more critical situation ever faced the Negroes of America than that of today – not in 1830, nor in 1861, nor in 1867. More than ever the appeal of the Negro for elementary justice falls on deaf ears. Three-fourths of us are disfranchised; yet no writer on democratic reform, no thirdparty movement says a word about Negroes. The Bull Moose crusade in 1912 refused to notice them; the La Follette uprising in 19244 was hardly aware of them; the Socialists still keep them in the background. Negro children are systematically denied education; when the National Educational Association asks for federal aid to education it permits discrimination to be perpetuated by the present local authorities. Once or twice a month Negroes convicted of no crime are openly and publicly lynched, and even burned; yet a National Crime Convention is brought to perfunctory and unwilling notice of this only by mass picketing and all-but illegal agitation. When a man with every qualification is refused a position simply because his great-grandfather was black, there is not a ripple of comment or protest. Long before the depression Negroes in the South were losing “Negro” jobs, those assigned them by common custom – poorly paid and largely undesirable toil, but nevertheless life-supporting. New techniques, new enterprises, mass production, impersonal ownership and control have been largely displacing the skilled white and Negro worker in tobacco manufacturing, in iron and steel, in lumbering and mining, and in transportation. Negroes are now restricted more and more to common labor and domestic service of the lowest paid and worst kind. In textile, chemical and other manufactures Negroes were from the first nearly excluded, and just as slavery kept the poor white out of profitable agriculture, so freedom prevents the poor Negro from finding a place in manufacturing. The worldwide decline in agriculture has moreover 3 4

Source: Current History (June 1935), vol. 42, issue 3, 265–70. In 1923, Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin launched a third-party campaign for the presidency that brought together socialist and other left-wing interests and that looked for a time to be a formidable challenge to President Calvin Coolidge in the election of 1924. La Follette ultimately received 16.6 percent of the popular vote.

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carried the mass of black farmers, despite heroic endeavor among the few, down to the level of landless tenants and peons. The World War and its wild aftermath seemed for a moment to open a new door; two million black workers rushed North to work in iron and steel, make automobiles and pack meat, build houses and do the heavy toil in factories. They met first the closed trade union which excluded them from the best paid jobs and pushed them into the low-wage gutter, denied them homes and mobbed them. Then they met the Depression. Since 1929 Negro workers, like white workers, have lost their jobs, have had mortgages foreclosed on their farms and homes, have used up their small savings. But, in the case of the Negro worker, everything has been worse in larger or smaller degree; the loss has been greater and more permanent. Technological displacement, which began before the Depression, has been accelerated, while unemployment and falling wages struck black men sooner, went to lower levels and will last longer. The colored people of America are coming to face the fact quite calmly that most white Americans do not like them, and are planning neither for their survival, nor for their definite future if it involves free, self-assertive modern manhood. This does not mean all Americans. A saving few are worried about the Negro problem; a still larger group are not ill-disposed, but they fear prevailing public opinion. The great mass of Americans are, however, merely representatives of average humanity. They muddle along with their own affairs and scarcely can be expected to take seriously the affairs of strangers or people whom they partly fear and partly despise. For many years it was the theory of most Negro leaders that this attitude was the insensibility of ignorance and inexperience, that white America did not know of or realize the continuing plight of the Negro. Accordingly, for the last two decades, we have striven by book and periodical, by speech and appeal, by various dramatic methods of agitation, to put the essential facts before the American people. Today there can be no doubt that Americans know the facts; and yet they remain for the most part indifferent and unmoved. The peculiar position of Negroes in America offers an opportunity. Negroes today cast probably 2,000,000 votes in a total of 40,000,000 and their vote will increase. This gives them, particularly in northern cities, and at critical times, a chance to hold a very considerable balance of power, and the mere threat of this being used intelligently and with determination may often mean much. The consuming power of 2,800,000 Negro families has recently been estimated at $166,000,000 a month – a tremendous power when intelligently directed. Their manpower as laborers probably equals that of Mexico or Yugoslavia. Their illiteracy is much lower than that of Spain or Italy. Their estimated per capita wealth about equals that of Japan. For a nation with this start in culture and efficiency to sit down and await the salvation of a white God is idiotic. With the use of their political power, their power as consumers, and their brainpower, added to that chance of personal appeal which proximity and neighborhood always give to human to human beings, Negroes can develop in the United States an economic nation within a nation, able to work through inner cooperation to found its own institutions, to educate its genius, and at the same time, without mob violence or extremes of race hatred, to keep in helpful touch and cooperate with the mass of the nation. This has happened more often than most people realize, in the case of groups not so obviously separated from the mass of people as are American Negroes. It must happen in our case or there is no hope for the Negro in America. Any movement toward such a program is today hindered by the absurd Negro philosophy of Scatter, Suppress, Wait, Escape. There are even many of our educated young

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leaders who think that because the Negro problem is not in evidence where there are few or no Negroes, this indicates a way out! They think that the problem of race can be settled by ignoring it and suppressing all reference to it. They think that we have only to wait in silence for the white people to settle the problem for us; and finally and predominantly, they think that the problem of twelve million Negro people, mostly poor, ignorant workers, is going to be settled by having their more educated and wealthy classes gradually and continually escape from their race into the mass of the American people, leaving the rest to sink, suffer and die. Proponents of this program claim, with much reason, that the plight of the masses is not the fault of the emerging classes. For the slavery and exploitation that reduced Negroes to their present level or at any rate hindered them from rising, the white world is to blame. Since the age-long process of raising a group is through the escape of its upper class into welcome fellowship with risen peoples, the Negro intelligentsia would submerge itself if it bent its back to the task of lifting the mass of people. There is logic in this answer, but futile logic. If the leading Negro classes cannot assume and bear the uplift of their own proletariat, they are doomed for all time. It is not a case of ethics; it is a plain case of necessity. The method by which this may be done is, first, for the American Negro to achieve a new economic solidarity. It may be said that this matter of a nation within a nation has already been partially accomplished in the organization of the Negro church, the Negro school and the Negro retail business, and despite all the justly due criticism, the result has been astonishing. The great majority of American Negroes are divided not only for religious but for a large number of social purposes into self-supporting economic units, self-governed, self-directed. The greatest difficulty is that these organizations have no logical and reasonable standards and do not attract the finest, most vigorous and best educated Negroes. When all these things are taken into consideration it becomes clearer to more and more American Negroes that, through voluntary and increased segregation, by careful autonomy and planned economic organization, they may build so strong and efficient a unit that twelve million men can no longer be refused fellowship and equality in the United States.

3.  Martin Luther King Jr., “The Montgomery Boycott Speech” (excerpts) (December 5, 1955) 5 Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–68), the Baptist minister and civil rights leader, here addresses the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) at the Holt Street Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, four days after Rosa Parks’s arrest for refusing to relinquish her seat at the front of a bus. My Friends, we are certainly very happy to see each of you out this evening. We are here this evening for serious business. We are here in a general sense because first and foremost we are American citizens and we are determined to apply our citizenship to 5

Reprinted by arrangement with The Heirs to the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr., c/o Writers House as agent for the proprietor New York, ny. Copyright © 1955 by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Renewed © 1983 by Coretta Scott King.

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the fullness of its meaning. We are here also because of our love for democracy, because of our deep-seated belief that democracy transformed from thin paper to thick action is the greatest form of government on earth. But we are here in a specific sense, because of the bus situation in Montgomery. We are here because we are determined to get the situation corrected. This situation is not at all new. The problem has existed over endless years. For many years now Negroes in Montgomery and so many other areas have been inflicted with the paralysis of crippling fears on buses in our community. On so many occasions, Negroes have been intimidated and humiliated and impressed – oppressed – because of the sheer fact that they were Negroes. I don’t have time this evening to go into the history of these numerous cases. Many of them now are lost in the thick fog of oblivion but at least one stands before us now with glaring dimensions. Just the other day, just last Thursday to be exact, one of the finest citizens in Montgomery, not one of the finest Negro citizens, but one of the finest citizens in Montgomery – was taken from a bus and carried to jail and because she refused to get up to give her seat to a white person. Now the press would have us believe that she refused to leave a reserved section for Negroes but I want you to know this evening that there is no reserved section. The law has never been clarified at that point. Now I think I speak with legal authority – not that I have any legal authority, but I think I speak with legal authority behind me – that the law, the ordinance, the city ordinance has never been totally clarified. Mrs. Rosa Parks is a fine person. And, since it had to happen, I’m happy that it happened to a person like Mrs. Parks, for nobody can doubt the boundless outreach of her integrity. Nobody can doubt the height of her character, nobody can doubt the depth of her Christian commitment and devotion to the teachings of Jesus. And I’m happy since it had to happen, it happened to a person that nobody can call a disturbing factor in the community. Mrs. Parks is a fine Christian person, unassuming, and yet there is integrity and character there. And just because she refused to get up, she was arrested. And you know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression. There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November. There comes a time. We are here, we are here this evening because we’re tired now. And I want to say that we are not here advocating violence. We have never done that. I want it to be known throughout Montgomery and throughout this nation that we are Christian people. We believe in the Christian religion. We believe in the teachings of Jesus. The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. That’s all. And certainly, certainly, this is the glory of America, with all of its faults. This is the glory of our democracy. If we were incarcerated behind the iron curtains of a Communistic nation, we couldn’t do this. If we were dropped in the dungeon of a totalitarian regime, we couldn’t do this. But the great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right. My friends, don’t let anybody make us feel that we are to be compared in our actions with the Ku Klux Klan or with the White Citizens Council. There will be no crosses burned at any bus stops in Montgomery. There will be no white persons pulled out of their homes and taken out on some distant road and lynched for not coop-

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erating. There will be nobody among us who will stand up and defy the Constitution of this nation. We only assemble here because of our desire to see right exist. My friends, I want it to be known that we’re going to work with grim and bold determination to gain justice on the buses in this city. And we are not wrong, we are not wrong in what we are doing. If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie. Love has no meaning. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.6 […] We, the disinherited of this land, we who have been oppressed so long, are tired of going through the long night of captivity. And now we are reaching out for the daybreak of freedom and justice and equality. May I say to you my friends, as I come to a close, and just giving some idea of why we are assembled here, that we must keep – and I want to stress this, in all of our doings, in all of our deliberations here this evening and all of the week and while – whatever we do, we must keep God in the forefront. Let us be Christian in all of our actions. But I want to tell you this evening that it is not enough for us to talk about love, love is one of the pivotal points of the Christian faith. There is another side called justice. And justice is really love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love. The Almighty God himself is not […] the God just standing out saying through Hosea, “I love you, Israel.” He’s also the God that stands up before the nations and said: “Be still and know that I’m God, that if you don’t obey me I will break the backbone of your power and slap you out of the orbits of your international and national relationships.”7 Standing beside love is always justice, and we are only using the tools of justice. Not only are we using the tools of persuasion, but we’ve come to see that we’ve got to use the tools of coercion. Not only is this thing a process of education, but it is also a process of legislation. As we stand and sit here this evening and as we prepare ourselves for what lies ahead, let us go out with a grim and bold determination that we are going to stick together. We are going to work together. Right here in Montgomery, when the history books are written in the future somebody will have to say, “There lived a race of people a black people, ‘fleecy locks and black complexion,’8 a people who had the moral courage to stand up for their rights. And thereby they injected a new meaning into the veins of history and of civilization.” And we’re gonna do that. God grant that we will do it before it is too late. As we proceed with our program let us think of these things. But just before leaving I want to say this. I want to urge you. You have voted [for this boycott], and you have done it with a great deal of enthusiasm, and I want to express my appreciation to you, on behalf of everybody here. Now let us go out to stick together and stay with this thing until the end. Now it means sacrificing, yes, it means sacrificing at points. But there are some things that we’ve got to learn to sacrifice for. And we’ve got to come to the point that we are determined not to accept a lot of things that we have been accepting in the past. 6 7 8

Amos 5:24. Consider Hosea 11:1 as well as Psalm 46:10. From “The Negro’s Complaint” by William Cowper (1788).

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So I’m urging you now. We have the facilities for you to get to your jobs, and we are putting, we have the cabs there at your service. Automobiles will be at your service, and don’t be afraid to use up any of the gas. If you have it, if you are fortunate enough to have a little money, use it for a good cause. Now my automobile is gonna be in it, it has been in it, and I’m not concerned about how much gas I’m gonna use. I want to see this thing work. And we will not be content until oppression is wiped out of Montgomery, and really out of America. We won’t be content until that is done. We are merely insisting on the dignity and worth of every human personality. And I don’t stand here, I’m not arguing for any selfish person. I’ve never been on a bus in Montgomery. But I would be less than a Christian if I stood back and said, because I don’t ride the bus, I don’t have to ride a bus, that it doesn’t concern me. I will not be content. I can hear a voice saying, “If you do it unto the least of these, my brother, you do it unto me.”9 And I won’t rest; I will face intimidation, and everything else, along with these other stalwart fighters for democracy and for citizenship. We don’t mind it, so long as justice comes out of it. And I’ve come to see now that as we struggle for our rights, maybe some of them will have to die. But somebody said, if a man doesn’t have something that he’ll die for, he isn’t fit to live.

4.  John F. Kennedy, “Report to the American People on Civil Rights” (excerpts) (June 11, 1963) 10 John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917–63) became at the age of forty-three the youngest president by election at the time of his inauguration in 1960. Here, in what MLK called “one of the most eloquent, profound, and unequivocal pleas for Justice and Freedom of all men ever made by any President,” Kennedy tells the nation of his plans to present landmark civil rights legislation banning discrimination. President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed for the bill after Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963 and signed the Civil Rights Act into law on July 2, 1964. Good evening, my fellow citizens: This afternoon, following a series of threats and defiant statements, the presence of Alabama National Guardsmen was required on the University of Alabama to carry out the final and unequivocal order of the United States District Court of the Northern District of Alabama. That order called for the admission of two clearly qualified young Alabama residents who happened to have been born Negro. That they were admitted peacefully on the campus is due in good measure to the conduct of the students of the University of Alabama, who met their responsibilities in a constructive way. I hope that every American, regardless of where he lives, will stop and examine his conscience about this and other related incidents. This Nation was founded by men 9 10

Matthew 25:40. Source: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/ historic-speeches/televised-address-to-the-nation-on-civil-rights.

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of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened. Today, we are committed to a worldwide struggle to promote and protect the rights of all who wish to be free. And when Americans are sent to Vietnam or West Berlin, we do not ask for whites only. It ought to be possible, therefore, for American students of any color to attend any public institution they select without having to be backed up by troops. It ought to be possible for American consumers of any color to receive equal service in places of public accommodation, such as hotels and restaurants and theaters and retail stores, without being forced to resort to demonstrations in the street, and it ought to be possible for American citizens of any color to register and to vote in a free election without interference or fear of reprisal. It ought to be possible, in short, for every American to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race or his color. In short, every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated. But this is not the case. […] The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay? One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free. We preach freedom around the world, and we mean it, and we cherish our freedom here at home, but are we to say to the world, and much more importantly, to each other that this is the land of the free except for the Negroes; that we have no second-class citizens except Negroes; that we have no class or caste system, no ghettoes, no master race except with respect to Negroes? Now the time has come for this Nation to fulfill its promise. The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that no city or State or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them. The fires of frustration and discord are burning in every city, North and South, where legal remedies are not at hand. Redress is sought in the streets, in demonstrations, parades, and protests which create tensions and threaten violence and threaten lives. We face, therefore, a moral crisis as a country and a people. It cannot be met by repressive police action. It cannot be left to increased demonstrations in the streets. It cannot be quieted by token moves or talk. It is a time to act in the Congress, in your State and local legislative body and, above all, in all of our daily lives. It is not enough to pin the blame on others, to say this is a problem of one section of the country or another, or deplore the facts that we face. A great change is at hand, and our task, our obligation, is to make that revolution, that change, peaceful and constructive for all.

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Those who do nothing are inviting shame, as well as violence. Those who act boldly are recognizing right, as well as reality. Next week I shall ask the Congress of the United States to act, to make a commitment it has not fully made in this century to the proposition that race has no place in American life or law. The Federal judiciary has upheld that proposition in a series of forthright cases. The Executive Branch has adopted that proposition in the conduct of its affairs, including the employment of Federal personnel, the use of Federal facilities, and the sale of federally financed housing. But there are other necessary measures which only the Congress can provide, and they must be provided at this session. The old code of equity law under which we live commands for every wrong a remedy, but in too many communities, in too many parts of the country, wrongs are inflicted on Negro citizens and there are no remedies at law. Unless the Congress acts, their only remedy is the street. I am, therefore, asking the Congress to enact legislation giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public – hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments. This seems to me to be an elementary right. Its denial is an arbitrary indignity that no American in 1963 should have to endure, but many do. […] I’m also asking the Congress to authorize the Federal Government to participate more fully in lawsuits designed to end segregation in public education. We have succeeded in persuading many districts to desegregate voluntarily. Dozens have admitted Negroes without violence. Today, a Negro is attending a State-supported institution in every one of our 50 States, but the pace is very slow. Too many Negro children entering segregated grade schools at the time of the Supreme Court’s decision nine years ago will enter segregated high schools this fall, having suffered a loss which can never be restored. The lack of an adequate education denies the Negro a chance to get a decent job. The orderly implementation of the Supreme Court decision, therefore, cannot be left solely to those who may not have the economic resources to carry the legal action or who may be subject to harassment. […] My fellow Americans, this is a problem which faces us all – in every city of the North as well as the South. Today, there are Negroes unemployed, two or three times as many compared to whites, inadequate education, moving into the large cities, unable to find work, young people particularly out of work without hope, denied equal rights, denied the opportunity to eat at a restaurant or a lunch counter or go to a movie theater, denied the right to a decent education, denied almost today the right to attend a State university even though qualified. It seems to me that these are matters which concern us all, not merely Presidents or Congressmen or Governors, but every citizen of the United States. This is one country. It has become one country because all of us and all the people who came here had an equal chance to develop their talents. We cannot say to ten percent of the population that you can’t have that right; that your children cannot have the chance to develop whatever talents they have; that the only way that they are going to get their rights is to go in the street and demonstrate. I think we owe them and we owe ourselves a better country than that. Therefore, I’m asking for your help in making it easier for us to move ahead and to provide the kind of equality of treatment which we would want ourselves; to give a chance for every child to be educated to the limit of his talents.

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As I’ve said before, not every child has an equal talent or an equal ability or equal motivation, but they should have the equal right to develop their talent and their ability and their motivation, to make something of themselves. We have a right to expect that the Negro community will be responsible, will uphold the law, but they have a right to expect that the law will be fair, that the Constitution will be color blind, as Justice Harlan said at the turn of the century. This is what we’re talking about and this is a matter which concerns this country and what it stands for, and in meeting it I ask the support of all our citizens. Thank you very much.

5.  Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream” (August 28, 1963) 11 Martin Luther King (1929–68) delivered the following speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial, to hundreds of thousands who gathered in the National Mall for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, one of the largest civil rights rallies in US history. It is MLK’s best known speech and among the greatest examples of oratory in the modern era. Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men – yes, black men as well as white men – would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds. But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

11

Reprinted by arrangement with The Heirs to the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr., c/o Writers House as agent for the proprietor New York, ny. Copyright © 1963 by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Renewed © 1991 by Coretta Scott King.

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We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. 1963 is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, when will you be satisfied? We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: for whites only. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.12 I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back 12

Amos 5:24.

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to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our Northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning: My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims’ pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring. And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that, let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.

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6.  Malcolm X, “Message to the Grassroots” (excerpts) (November 10, 1963) 13 Born Malcolm Little (1925–65) in Omaha, Nebraska, Malcolm X adopted X as a symbol of his unknown African last name after joining the Nation of Islam while in prison. He was one of the most prominent leaders of what became the Black Power movement, criticizing in particular MLK’s non-violent protests and demanding a separation of Black and White Americans. Malcolm X would be assassinated roughly a year after he delivered this speech, by a member of the Nation of Islam, from which group he had distanced himself. And during the few moments that we have left, we want to have just an off-the-cuff chat between you and me – us. We want to talk right down to earth in a language that everybody here can easily understand. We all agree tonight, all of the speakers have agreed, that America has a very serious problem. Not only does America have a very serious problem, but our people have a very serious problem. America’s problem is us. We’re her problem. The only reason she has a problem is she doesn’t want us here. And every time you look at yourself, be you black, brown, red, or yellow – a so-called Negro – you represent a person who poses such a serious problem for America because you’re not wanted. Once you face this as a fact, then you can start plotting a course that will make you appear intelligent, instead of unintelligent. What you and I need to do is learn to forget our differences. When we come together, we don’t come together as Baptists or Methodists. You don’t catch hell ’cause you’re a Baptist, and you don’t catch hell ’cause you’re a Methodist. You don’t catch hell ’cause you’re a Methodist or Baptist. You don’t catch hell because you’re a Democrat or a Republican. You don’t catch hell because you’re a Mason or an Elk. And you sure don’t catch hell ’cause you’re an American; ’cause if you was an American, you wouldn’t catch no hell. You catch hell ’cause you’re a black man. You catch hell, all of us catch hell, for the same reason. So we are all black people, so-called Negroes, second-class citizens, ex-slaves. You are nothing but an ex-slave. You don’t like to be told that. But what else are you? You are ex-slaves. You didn’t come here on the “Mayflower.” You came here on a slave ship – in chains, like a horse, or a cow, or a chicken. And you were brought here by the people who came here on the “Mayflower.” You were brought here by the so-called Pilgrims, or Founding Fathers. They were the ones who brought you here. We have a common enemy. We have this in common: We have a common oppressor, a common exploiter, and a common discriminator. But once we all realize that we have this common enemy, then we unite on the basis of what we have in common. And what we have foremost in common is that enemy – the white man. He’s an enemy to all of us. I know some of you all think that some of them aren’t enemies. Time will tell. In Bandung back in, I think, 1954, was the first unity meeting in centuries of black people. And once you study what happened at the Bandung conference [in Indonesia], and the results of the Bandung conference, it actually serves as a model for the same procedure you and I can use to get our problems solved. At Bandung all the nations came together. There were dark nations from Africa and Asia. Some of them 13

Source: So Just: Speeches on Social Justice, www.sojust.net/speeches/malcolm_x_message.html.

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were Buddhists. Some of them were Muslim. Some of them were Christians. Some of them were Confucianists; some were atheists. Despite their religious differences, they came together. Some were communists; some were socialists; some were capitalists. Despite their economic and political differences, they came together. All of them were black, brown, red, or yellow. The number one thing that was not allowed to attend the Bandung conference was the white man. He couldn’t come. Once they excluded the white man, they found that they could get together. Once they kept him out, everybody else fell right in and fell in line. This is the thing that you and I have to understand. And these people who came together didn’t have nuclear weapons; they didn’t have jet planes; they didn’t have all of the heavy armaments that the white man has. But they had unity. They were able to submerge their little petty differences and agree on one thing: That though one African came from Kenya and was being colonized by the Englishman, and another African came from the Congo and was being colonized by the Belgian, and another African came from Guinea and was being colonized by the French, and another came from Angola and was being colonized by the Portuguese, when they came to the Bandung conference, they looked at the Portuguese, and at the Frenchman, and at the Englishman, and at the Dutchman – and learned or realized that the one thing that all of them had in common: they were all Europeans, blond, blue-eyed and white-skinned. They began to recognize who their enemy was. They realized all over the world where the dark man was being oppressed, he was being oppressed by the white man; where the dark man was being exploited, he was being exploited by the white man. So they got together under this basis – that they had a common enemy. And when you and I here in Detroit and in Michigan and in America who have been awakened today look around us, we too realize here in America we all have a common enemy, whether he’s in Georgia or Michigan, whether he’s in California or New York. He’s the same man: blue eyes and blond hair and pale skin – same man. So what we have to do is what they did. They agreed to stop quarreling among themselves. Any little spat that they had, they’d settle it among themselves, go into a huddle – don’t let the enemy know that you got a disagreement. […] I would like to make a few comments concerning the difference between the black revolution and the Negro revolution. There’s a difference. Are they both the same? And if they’re not, what is the difference? What is the difference between a black revolution and a Negro revolution? First, what is a revolution? Sometimes I’m inclined to believe that many of our people are using this word “revolution” loosely, without taking careful consideration [of] what this word actually means, and what its historic characteristics are. […] Look at the American Revolution in 1776. That revolution was for what? For land. Why did they want land? Independence. How was it carried out? Bloodshed. Number one, it was based on land, the basis of independence. And the only way they could get it was bloodshed. The French Revolution – what was it based on? The land-less against the landlord. What was it for? Land. How did they get it? Bloodshed. Was no love lost; was no compromise; was no negotiation. I’m telling you, you don’t know what a revolution is. ’Cause when you find out what it is, you’ll get back in the alley; you’ll get out of the way. The Russian Revolution – what was it based on? Land. The land-less against the landlord. How did they bring it about? Bloodshed. You haven’t got a revolution that doesn’t involve bloodshed. And you’re afraid to bleed. I said, you’re afraid to bleed.

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[As] long as the white man sent you to Korea, you bled. He sent you to Germany, you bled. He sent you to the South Pacific to fight the Japanese, you bled. You bleed for white people. But when it comes time to seeing your own churches being bombed and little black girls be murdered, you haven’t got no blood. You bleed when the white man says bleed; you bite when the white man says bite; and you bark when the white man says bark. I hate to say this about us, but it’s true. How are you going to be nonviolent in Mississippi, as violent as you were in Korea? How can you justify being nonviolent in Mississippi and Alabama, when your churches are being bombed, and your little girls are being murdered, and at the same time you’re going to be violent with Hitler, and Tojo, and somebody else that you don’t even know? If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it’s wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it’s wrong for America to draft us and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country. […] The white man knows what a revolution is. He knows that the black revolution is world-wide in scope and in nature. The black revolution is sweeping Asia, sweeping Africa, is rearing its head in Latin America. The Cuban Revolution – that’s a revolution. They overturned the system. Revolution is in Asia. Revolution is in Africa. And the white man is screaming because he sees revolution in Latin America. How do you think he’ll react to you when you learn what a real revolution is? You don’t know what a revolution is. If you did, you wouldn’t use that word. A revolution is bloody. Revolution is hostile. Revolution knows no compromise. Revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way. And you, sitting around here like a knot on the wall, saying, “I’m going to love these folks no matter how much they hate me.” No, you need a revolution. Whoever heard of a revolution where they lock arms, as Reverend Cleage was pointing out beautifully, singing “We Shall Overcome”? Just tell me. You don’t do that in a revolution. You don’t do any singing; you’re too busy swinging. It’s based on land. A revolutionary wants land so he can set up his own nation, an independent nation. These Negroes aren’t asking for no nation. They’re trying to crawl back on the plantation. When you want a nation, that’s called nationalism. When the white man became involved in a revolution in this country against England, what was it for? He wanted this land so he could set up another white nation. That’s white nationalism. The American Revolution was white nationalism. The French Revolution was white nationalism. The Russian Revolution too – yes, it was – white nationalism. You don’t think so? Why [do] you think Khrushchev and Mao can’t get their heads together? White nationalism. All the revolutions that’s going on in Asia and Africa today are based on what? Black nationalism. A revolutionary is a black nationalist. He wants a nation. I was reading some beautiful words by Reverend Cleage, pointing out why he couldn’t get together with someone else here in the city because all of them were afraid of being identified with black nationalism. If you’re afraid of black nationalism, you’re afraid of revolution. And if you love revolution, you love black nationalism. To understand this, you have to go back to what [the] young brother here referred to as the house Negro and the field Negro – back during slavery. There was two kinds of slaves. There was the house Negro and the field Negro. The house Negroes – they lived in the house with master, they dressed pretty good, they ate good ’cause they

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ate his food – what he left. They lived in the attic or the basement, but still they lived near the master; and they loved their master more than the master loved himself. They would give their life to save the master’s house quicker than the master would. The house Negro, if the master said, “We got a good house here,” the house Negro would say, “Yeah, we got a good house here.” Whenever the master said “we,” he said “we.” That’s how you can tell a house Negro. […] On that same plantation, there was the field Negro. The field Negro – those were the masses. There were always more Negroes in the field than there was Negroes in the house. The Negro in the field caught hell. He ate leftovers. In the house they ate high up on the hog. The Negro in the field didn’t get nothing but what was left of the insides of the hog. They call ’em “chitt’lings” nowadays. In those days they called them what they were: guts. That’s what you were – a gut-eater. And some of you all still gut-eaters. The field Negro was beaten from morning to night. He lived in a shack, in a hut; he wore old, castoff clothes. He hated his master. I say he hated his master. He was intelligent. That house Negro loved his master. But that field Negro – remember, they were in the majority, and they hated the master. When the house caught on fire, he didn’t try and put it out; that field Negro prayed for a wind, for a breeze. When the master got sick, the field Negro prayed that he’d die. If someone come to the field Negro and said, “Let’s separate, let’s run,” he didn’t say “Where we going?” He’d say, “Any place is better than here.” You’ve got field Negroes in America today. I’m a field Negro. The masses are the field Negroes. When they see this man’s house on fire, you don’t hear these little Negroes talking about “our government is in trouble.” They say, “The government is in trouble.” Imagine a Negro: “Our government”! I even heard one say “our astronauts.” They won’t even let him near the plant – and “our astronauts”! “Our Navy” – that’s a Negro that’s out of his mind. That’s a Negro that’s out of his mind. […] There’s nothing in our book, the Quran – you call it “Ko-ran” – that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery. That’s a good religion. In fact, that’s that old-time religion. That’s the one that Ma and Pa used to talk about: an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, and a head for a head, and a life for a life: That’s a good religion. And doesn’t nobody resent that kind of religion being taught but a wolf, who intends to make you his meal. This is the way it is with the white man in America. He’s a wolf and you’re sheep. Any time a shepherd, a pastor, teach you and me not to run from the white man and, at the same time, teach us not to fight the white man, he’s a traitor to you and me. Don’t lay down our life all by itself. No, preserve your life. it’s the best thing you got. And if you got to give it up, let it be even-steven. […] I would like to just mention just one other thing else quickly, and that is the method that the white man uses, how the white man uses these “big guns,” or Negro leaders, against the black revolution. They are not a part of the Negro revolution. They are used against the Negro revolution. When Martin Luther King failed to desegregate Albany, Georgia, the civil-rights struggle in America reached its low point. King became bankrupt almost, as a leader. Plus, even financially, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was in financial trouble; plus it was in trouble, period, with the people when they failed to desegregate Albany, Georgia. Other Negro civil-rights leaders of so-called national stature became fallen idols. As they became fallen idols, began to lose their prestige and influence, local Negro leaders began to stir up the masses. […]

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As soon as King failed in Birmingham, Negroes took to the streets. King got out and went out to California to a big rally and raised about – I don’t know how many thousands of dollars. [He] come to Detroit and had a march and raised some more thousands of dollars. And recall, right after that. [Roy] Wilkins attacked King, accused King and the CORE [Congress Of Racial Equality] of starting trouble everywhere and then making the NAACP get them out of jail and spend a lot of money; and then they accused King and CORE of raising all the money and not paying it back. This happened; I’ve got it in documented evidence in the newspaper. Roy started attacking King, and King started attacking Roy, and [James Leonard] Farmer started attacking both of them. And as these Negroes of national stature began to attack each other, they began to lose their control of the Negro masses. And Negroes was out there in the streets. They was talking about [how] we was going to march on Washington. By the way, right at that time Birmingham had exploded, and the Negroes in Birmingham – remember, they also exploded. They began to stab the crackers in the back and bust them up ’side their head – yes, they did. That’s when Kennedy sent in the troops, down in Birmingham. So, and right after that, Kennedy got on the television and said “this is a moral issue.” That’s when he said he was going to put out a civil-rights bill. And when he mentioned civil-rights bill and the Southern crackers started talking about [how] they were going to boycott or filibuster it, then the Negroes started talking – about what? We’re going to march on Washington, march on the Senate, march on the White House, march on the Congress, and tie it up, bring it to a halt; don’t let the government proceed. They even said they was going out to the airport and lay down on the runway and don’t let no airplanes land. I’m telling you what they said. That was revolution. That was revolution. That was the black revolution. It was the grass roots out there in the street. [It] scared the white man to death, scared the white power structure in Washington, D.C. to death; I was there. When they found out that this black steamroller was going to come down on the capital, they called in Wilkins; they called in Randolph; they called in these national Negro leaders that you respect and told them, “Call it off.” Kennedy said, “Look, you all letting this thing go too far.” And Old Tom said, “Boss, I can’t stop it, because I didn’t start it.” I’m telling you what they said. They said, “I’m not even in it, much less at the head of it.” They said, “These Negroes are doing things on their own. They’re running ahead of us.” And that old shrewd fox, he said, “Well if you all aren’t in it, I’ll put you in it. I’ll put you at the head of it. I’ll endorse it. I’ll welcome it. I’ll help it. I’ll join it.” A matter of hours went by. They had a meeting at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City. The Carlyle Hotel is owned by the Kennedy family; that’s the hotel Kennedy spent the night at, two nights ago; [it] belongs to his family. A philanthropic society headed by a white man named Stephen Currier called all the top civil-rights leaders together at the Carlyle Hotel. And he told them that, “By you all fighting each other, you are destroying the civil-rights movement. And since you’re fighting over money from white liberals, let us set up what is known as the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership. Let’s form this council, and all the civil-rights organizations will belong to it, and we’ll use it for fund-raising purposes.” Let me show you how tricky the white man is. And as soon as they got it formed, they elected Whitney Young as the chairman, and who [do] you think became the co-chairman? Stephen Currier, the white man, a millionaire. Powell was talking about it down at the Cobo [Hall] today. This is what he was talking about. Powell knows it happened. Randolph knows it

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happened. Wilkins knows it happened. King knows it happened. Everyone of that so-called Big Six – they know what happened. Once they formed it, with the white man over it, he promised them and gave them $800,000 to split up between the Big Six; and told them that after the march was over they’d give them $700,000 more. A million and a half dollars – split up between leaders that you’ve been following, going to jail for, crying crocodile tears for. And they’re nothing but Frank James and Jesse James and the what-do-you-call-’em brothers. [As] soon as they got the setup organized, the white man made available to them top public relations experts; opened the news media across the country at their disposal; and then they begin to project these Big Six as the leaders of the march. […] It’s just like when you’ve got some coffee that’s too black, which means it’s too strong. What you do? You integrate it with cream; you make it weak. If you pour too much cream in, you won’t even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it’ll put you to sleep. This is what they did with the march on Washington. They joined it. They didn’t integrate it; they infiltrated it. They joined it, became a part of it, took it over. And as they took it over, it lost its militancy. They ceased to be angry. They ceased to be hot. They ceased to be uncompromising. Why, it even ceased to be a march. It became a picnic, a circus. Nothing but a circus, with clowns and all. You had one right here in Detroit – I saw it on television – with clowns leading it, white clowns and black clowns. I know you don’t like what I’m saying, but I’m going to tell you anyway. ’Cause I can prove what I’m saying. If you think I’m telling you wrong, you bring me Martin Luther King and A. Philip Randolph and James Farmer and those other three, and see if they’ll deny it over a microphone. No, it was a sellout. It was a takeover. When James Baldwin came in from Paris, they wouldn’t let him talk, ’cause they couldn’t make him go by the script. Burt Lancaster read the speech that Baldwin was supposed to make; they wouldn’t let Baldwin get up there, ’cause they know Baldwin’s liable to say anything. They controlled it so tight – they told those Negroes what time to hit town, how to come, where to stop, what signs to carry, what song to sing, what speech they could make, and what speech they couldn’t make; and then told them to get out of town by sundown. And every one of those Toms was out of town by sundown. Now I know you don’t like my saying this. But I can back it up. It was a circus, a performance that beat anything Hollywood could ever do, the performance of the year. [Walter] Reuther [head of the United Automobile Workers] and those other three devils should get an Academy Award for the best actors ’cause they acted like they really loved Negroes and fooled a whole lot of Negroes. And the six Negro leaders should get an award too, for the best supporting cast.

6 The Women’s Movement

1.  Sojourner Truth, “Ar’n’t I a Woman?” (1851) 1 Isabella “Belle” Baumfree (1797–1883), who fled slavery in New York and changed her name to Sojourner Truth following a religious experience, gave one of the greatest speeches of the women’s abolitionist movement at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio. There are (at least) two versions of the speech. The following is the more famous, but perhaps the less accurate, version, which has the repeated question, “Ar’n’t I a Woman?” It was published twelve years after the delivery of the speech by Frances Dana Gage, who was the president of the original convention. “Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that, ’twixt the slaves of the South and the women at the North, all a-talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this here talking about? That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place;” and, raising herself to her full height, and her voice to a pitch like rolling thunder, she asked, “And ar’n’t I a woman? Look at me. Look at my arm,” and she bared her right arm to the shoulder, showing its tremendous muscular power. “I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me – And ar’n’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man (when I could get it), and bear the lash as well – And ar’n’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen them most all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me – And ar’n’t I a 1

Source: Frances Dana Gage, New York Independent, April 23, 1863. Our transcription mostly keeps the wording of the original but occasionally changes the spelling. For instance, we have replaced “chillin” with “children” and “dar” with “there.” Gage’s spelling gives Truth a southern accent, which she did not have, perhaps because Gage wanted to place Truth’s speech in the context of southern slavery.

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woman? Then they talks about this thing in the head; what this they call it?” “intellect” whispered some one near. “That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?” [and she pointed her significant finger and sent a keen glance at the minister who had made the argument. The cheering was long and loud.] “Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman. Where did your Christ come from?” [Rolling thunder could not have stilled that crowd as did those deep, wonderful tones, as she stood there with outstretched arms and eye of fire. Raising her voice still louder, she repeated –] “What did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him. […] the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all her one lone, all these together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again, and now they is asking to, the men better let them.” (long continued cheering). “Obliged to you for hearing on me, and now old Sojourner ha’n’t got nothing more to say.”

2.  Susan B. Anthony, “On a Woman’s Right to Vote” (excerpts) (1873) 2 Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) worked tirelessly, alongside Elizabeth Cady Stanton among others, to secure women’s right to vote, which would eventually result in the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution in 1929. Anthony gave the following speech after having been tried and fined for voting in the 1872 election. At her sentencing she said to the presiding judge, “May it please your honor, I will never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.” Friends and fellow citizens: I stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen’s rights, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any state to deny. […] The preamble of the Federal Constitution says: “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

2

Source: An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the Charge of Illegal Voting, at the Presidential Election in Nov., 1872, and on the Trial of Beverly W. Jones, Edwin T. Marsh and William B. Hall, The Inspectors of Election by whom her Vote was received (Rochester, ny: Daily Democracy and Chronicle, 1874).

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It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people – women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government – the ballot. […] For any state to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the disfranchisement of one entire half of the people is to pass a bill of attainder, or an ex post facto law, and is therefore a violation of the supreme law of the land. By it the blessings of liberty are forever withheld from women and their female posterity. To them this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor. An oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters, of every household – which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord, and rebellion into every home of the nation. […] The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens; and no state has a right to make any law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several states is today null and void, precisely as is every one against Negroes. Is the right to vote one of the privileges or immunities of citizens? I think the disfranchised ex-rebels, and the ex-state prisoners will all agree with me, that it is not only one of them, but the one without which all others are nothing. Seek first the kingdom of the ballot, and all things else shall be given thee, is the political injunction. Webster, Worcester, and Bouvier all define a citizen to be a person in the United States, entitled to vote and hold office. […] We no longer petition Legislature or Congress to give us the right to vote. We appeal to the women everywhere to exercise their too long neglected “citizen’s right to vote.” We appeal to all inspectors of election everywhere to receive the votes of all United States citizens as it is their duty to do. We appeal to United States commissioners and marshals to arrest the inspectors who reject the names and votes of United States citizens, as it is their duty to do, and leave those alone who, like our eight ward inspectors, perform their duties faithfully and well. We ask the juries to fail to return verdicts of “guilty” against honest, law-abiding, tax-paying United States citizens for offering their votes at our elections. […] We ask the judges to render true and unprejudiced opinions of the law, and whenever there is room for a doubt to give its benefit on the side of liberty and equal rights to women, remembering that “the true rule of interpretation under our national constitution, especially since its amendments, is that anything for human rights is constitutional, everything against human rights unconstitutional.” And it is on this line that we propose to fight our battle for the ballot – all peaceably, but nevertheless persistently through to complete triumph, when all United States citizens shall be recognized as equals before the law.

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3.  Lucy Parkman Scott, “Be Women and Do a Woman’s Work” (April 10, 1895) 3 Lucy Parkman Scott (1854–1937), president of the New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage. She gave the following address to the Judiciary Committee of the New York State Senate in Albany, ny. We women who are opposed to the Extension of the Suffrage, have felt constrained to appear before this Committee because we believe the Legislative bodies to be under a misapprehension as to the attitude of the majority of our sex toward this, one of the most important social questions of the day. Every extension of the Suffrage has been a subject of grave debate, but the general feeling of a fundamental similarity between men, has led to Universal Male Suffrage. Now comes the question of the extension of the Suffrage to women, and we can no more call it a like question to those earlier ones, than we can call women like men. Equal they may be – different they certainly are. I shall very briefly touch upon the points which appeal most strongly to the body of women whom this committee represents. The question of the right of Suffrage is disposed of by the fact that the State alone holds the power to extend the Suffrage, and she is only justified in extending it when her own best interest can be served thereby. That the best interests of the State would be served by the extension of the Suffrage to women, we do not believe. Think for a moment of giving the voting power to a majority (we women are in the majority you know), unable to coerce a troublesome minority by physical power. A government unable to compel is no government at all – it is a mere travesty, a farce. We cannot be blind to the fact that civilization in the nature of things progresses by the force of the law, not by its moral suasion. But civilization goes forward by two roads: one I have mentioned, the other is philanthropy, and I use the word broadly. By it I cover educational, municipal and charitable work of all kinds, and it has a most important bearing on this question. The fact that women have no political prizes to gain, no offices in view, no constituencies to please, has made them of special value in all this wide field of work. Their ends are more quickly achieved since their singleness of purpose cannot be questioned. Let them be plunged into the arena of political strife and there will be no one left to carry on the work they now sustain so bravely. There is a ridiculous side to this whole question, which is tacitly avoided in these public hearings, as are other more serious views of the subject, but brief as the time is I propose to touch upon both. A very slight mention of the ridiculous side will suffice. We women are not supposed to be humorous. I know, but even the most serious of us are obliged to smile when we ask ourselves who will do our work when we are doing the men’s! The obvious reply to that is that all women will not want to go into political life if they have the ballot, any more than all men do, but all men may and can: it is a matter of choice. Legislation is for the majority, and the majority of women are mothers, whose health and strength must be given to the State, during their best years, only 3

Source: Francis M. Scott, Extension of Suffrage to Women, Address by Mrs. Francis M. Scott delivered before the Judiciary Committee of the New York State Senate, April 10, 1895 (Boston: Massachusetts Man Suffrage Association, 1895?).

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through the medium of those lives in whose preservation and upbringing lies the future of our country. It is these women – the great majority – whom we beg you to protect: the chivalry of men belongs to them. So sure are thousands of them that you will never place the burden of government upon their shoulders that it is difficult to persuade them that there is any danger of your mistaking the clamor of the suffragists for truth, or that their still small voice should be heard above the din. It is true that last spring, in less than three weeks, without solicitation, 7,000 names, nearly half of which were those of self-supporting women, were collected and sent to the Constitutional Convention to protest against the amendment you are now considering, but I cannot give you an idea of how difficult it was for many women to gather sufficient courage even to put their names to a public paper. They confessed to a struggle before they could make up their minds to come forward. That may have been a foolish feeling – it is not for me to criticize – it is at least one which most women understand. These women do not want publicity, they do not want to be mixed up in politics, they just want to be women and do a woman’s work, and they are the great majority of our sex, and they should be respected. This question is often confounded with that of the higher education. Believe me they have nothing whatever to do with one another. The ballot in itself is not an educational force, as you men very well know, nor is it a wand with which to turn all vileness into purity. It is simply a part of the machinery of the State, a very cumbersome part, costing an enormous amount, but the only way we know of giving to a few representative men the power to legislate for all. The laws of the State have given women so much that any attempt to alter her position would, in the cause of justice, have to begin by taking away, not adding to her rights. The gradual changes in the laws of this State during the last quarter of a century have taken away every cry of the Suffragists of that earlier time, and what women have asked, men have done time and time again. Now in closing, I wish to be very serious. To many young persons, to many emotional persons, change is mistaken for progress. Thus, in the train of the women so long identified with the demand for suffrage, who do not realize that the times have outgrown their cause, have followed many who, full of the unrestful spirit of the end of the century are hurrying along, eager only for something different, something more, forgetting the inexorable law which science has laid down: the law we know as the Specialization of Function. In every line of life we see this law ruling development. Where there is specialization there comes to be greater and greater perfection; nowhere is progress accompanied by a diffusion of force, but always by a concentration of effort in special directions. So, since the first development of sex, has specialization of the male and female types gone on: men have grown more manly, women more womanly. Are we alone of all nature to forcibly destroy the work of untold ages, and thrusting men and women together, demand that the work that each is beginning to be perfect in shall be indifferently done by both! And then, there are the assertions of greater virtue made for our sex without foundation. Again, in being equal we differ. Born as we are of man and woman, inheriting the mental and moral characteristics of both parents, we differ from our brothers only in so far as our physical limitations affect our organizations. Theirs are the robuster virtues, called to growth and strength by rough contact with the world. Theirs is the word which serves for the bond; the responsibility which is the foundation of business life; the integrity on which justice rests; the broad mindedness, which gives each man his chance. And to balance all that, women have the spirit of self-sacrifice, the

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charity which forgives, the personal purity, all of which are essential to the existence of the home and cause their sons to rise up and call them blessed. I approach this question of morality with natural hesitation. It and our physical disabilities are the points I spoke of earlier as being ignored when this question is seriously discussed, and yet unless considered this question cannot be properly dealt with. Who does not realize the present disinclination for motherhood which possesses so many of our younger generation, and who can see it without alarm? It can be traced to this unrestful desire for life outside the home. When motherhood is spoken of with contempt, when a home-life is considered too dull to be endured; when the ambition of the intellectual life becomes so warped as to be dissatisfied with any outlet but that of public life – what is to become of the future? Do what we may, say what we can, we cannot break down the barrier of sex which indicates the parting of the ways. Build up the wall of the law about us, seeking and accepting our counsel meanwhile; protect the homes, which we women alone can make for you; open to us every door for our education and advancement, but do not put upon the shoulders of women the muskets they are too weak to carry, nor the burden of the government which was constituted to protect them; do not force them to undertake an undue share of the world’s work. I leave this matter in your hands with confidence – I am a woman speaking for my silent sisters, appealing to you to leave us the liberty we might demand, begging you not to give your sanction to a retrogressive action, by breaking down the barrier experience has built between our sexes, but as you go on becoming nobler, finer men, carrying on the active part of the world’s work, to let us too progress, becoming every decade abler and more intellectual women, better and better fitted to help and counsel, but never your rivals, never partakers in the eager strife of public life.

4.  Josephine Jewell Dodge, “Woman Suffrage Opposed to Woman’s Rights” (November 1914) 4 Josephine Jewell Dodge (1855–1928), founder and first president of the Association of Day Nurseries of New York City, sought to help working mothers with childcare in the 1890s, and, in 1911, founded the National Association Opposed to Women Suffrage. Equal suffrage awaits a trial. Woman suffrage as tried in the United States is the most unequal division of responsibilities imaginable. The voting woman has retained most of the special rights and exemptions accorded her under man-made laws, while she has failed to discharge the obligations which the voting man assumes with the elective franchise. The vote of the man is a sort of contract to support the verdict of the ballot box, if need be, by the jury box, the cartridge belt, the sheriff’s summons. The voting woman is exempt from these obligations. She is a privileged voter. While she may have political power, she does not have political control. Stability of government demands that the control of government should remain in the hands of those who can be held 4

Source: Mrs. Arthur M. Dodge, “Woman Suffrage opposed to Woman’s Rights,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (November 1914).

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responsible for results. Frederick Harrison cautions us that “Men, and men only, are entitled to political control since, in the last resort, it is their muscular force which has to make good and defend it.” Certainly, it is unequal suffrage while women retain the exemptions demanded by their physical nature, and exercise political power without responsibility. Such inequalities menace the stability of the state. Some venturesome enthusiasts declare that women wish no special rights, no special laws, but wish to be treated “exactly as the men are.” But such consistency as this is rare; it would be a brutal interpretation of woman’s rights to insist that the hard-won body of legislation, which protects woman because she is the potential mother, be abolished and the vote given to woman in exchange. Yet this and this only is equal suffrage. “To treat women exactly as men” is to deny all the progress through evolution which has been made by an increasing specialization of function. Woman suffrage in its last analysis is a retrogressive movement toward conditions where the work of man and woman was the same because neither sex had evolved enough to see the wisdom of being a specialist in its own line. Reform work, welfare work, desirable and necessary though they may be to offset the results of faulty education, are not the sole end of government. Legislation dealing with these measures responds to the pressure of public opinion which woman, the educator, supreme factor in the social order, dominates. But government is not reform legislation. In the last analysis government is concerned with the protection of persons and property. It is well for us in these days of fantastic legislation, of the promulgation of unenforced and unenforceable laws to recall Thomas Jefferson’s dictum that a democracy ceases to be such when those who make the laws cease to be those who can enforce the laws. We are all agreed on the right of every woman, as of every man, to that individual development which shall make possible her fullest contribution to the social order. If it can be shown, as Ex-President Taft suggests, that women have been unjustly prejudiced by governmental measures or the lack of them and that they could remedy this by their vote, or if they can show that, by the extension of the franchise to women either the general government would be better or stronger, or the existing electorate would be improved in its average moral tone, its intelligence, its political discrimination, its patriotism and attention to political duties, they make their case. In a democracy “the people are bound to obedience under what is undoubtedly the will of the majority.” It has yet to be shown that the majority of women are behind this demand for political activities. If women are intelligent enough to vote, are they not intelligent enough to know whether or not they are ready to assume the responsibilities of government? Those who insist that political justice demands woman’s enfranchisement must recognize the right of woman to say whether or not she shall be drafted into political activities, a right based upon woman’s concern in the establishment and maintenance of sound public policies. Under the common law which we inherited from England, woman suffered many disabilities and inequalities. Without the woman’s vote and under man-made laws these inequalities have been gradually reduced until the statute books of most states record the legal rights and exemptions of women, laws which discriminate in favor of women in regard to such matters as dower rights, alimony, and personal property and laws, which show that woman, instead of being “unjustly prejudiced by governmental measures,” has been given special protection under the law in recognition of the fact that as

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a woman she has a special service to perform for the state and the state must surround her with protective legislation in order that she may be most efficient where the state demands her highest efficiency; in order that the motherhood of the race may be protected and that future citizens shall have the birth right and the inheritance of a strong and vigorous childhood. Because of her lowered physical and nervous vitality, the woman worker has had to be protected in her industrial life in order that the state must conserve her value as the woman citizen. Women cannot be treated exactly as men are, and motherhood, potential or actual, does determine woman’s efficiency in industrial and social undertakings. Merely dropping a piece of paper in the ballot box is not a contribution to stable government unless that piece of paper be followed up by persistent and ofttimes aggressive activities in the field of political strife. While the cry for political equality (which we contend is political inequality) has gone on, the civil and legal rights of women have been established without the woman’s vote. Furthermore, it may be stated that wherever the votes of women have been added to the votes of men there has been no evidence of initiative in legislation distinct from the normal trend of such legislation in male suffrage states. Since this is so, the woman’s vote would seem to be a waste of energy, because a duplication of effort, and there is no compensating gain to offset the economic loss of two people doing what one person can do. The woman’s vote has not been necessary to open the opportunities for higher education to her. Women like Mary Lyon, Emily Willard and Catherine Beecher, who had no concern with the woman suffrage agitation, did their splendid pioneer educational work and the woman of today reaps the harvest. The right of woman to enter the trades or professions has been won independent of her political activities. It is true that a dozen or more trades are closed to her, but her participation in these threatens her welfare as a woman and the state reserves the right to limit her activities therein. Male suffrage states have recognized the need of vocational training for woman and have opened trade schools wherein girls might become skilled workers and so be in a position to command higher wages. The appalling fact of woman in industry is that she is often so young and so unskilled that she consequently commands a low wage. A survey of the wage-earning women of the United States reveals the fact that nearly one-third of these are under voting age. The right of the industrial woman to organization for collective bargaining is recognized. No vote of woman was necessary to give her this equality with the working man. The right of women to protection in the courts, the right of our women to claim the protection as citizens under the United States flag, is established on an absolute equality with man’s similar right, without woman’s political activities. The married woman has the right to hold property separately; to make contracts and to control her wages. Equality should demand that a husband should have a right to his own earnings, but society demands that his earnings shall be liable for the support and maintenance of his family while, except in some woman suffrage states, the wife’s earnings are exempt from such liability. Even in those states where equal guardianship laws are not written on the statute books the practice of the courts, in those unfortunate instances where the family is disrupted, gives the guardianship of minor children to the mother provided she is a fit person and can provide means for their support. The divorce courts certainly reveal no inequalities in the granting of divorce to men and women, while the courts grant to men no provision corresponding to the woman’s alimony.

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The first commission to investigate a minimum wage for women was appointed in the male suffrage state of Massachusetts. The fundamental basis of a standard law for woman in industry is acknowledged to be the prohibition of night work, because of the damaged health of the working woman who is engaged in industrial pursuits by night and undertakes woman’s work in the home by day. Nebraska, Massachusetts, and Indiana blazed the path for this legislation. Within the last year, the great industrial states of New York and Pennsylvania have followed. In none of these states do women vote, but in all of these states public opinion has demanded that woman should not be handicapped in the offering of her highest efficiency. The state cannot permit the creation of the efficient worker at the cost of the efficient woman. Equal suffrage would demand that woman should enter into competition with man in a fair field with favor to none, but woman’s welfare demands protection under the laws. The best child labor laws are found in male suffrage states. Industrial and economic conditions have revealed the necessity of these laws. Public opinion in which the work of women played a noble part has urged their enactment and the votes of women have not been necessary to further the release of the child from the burden of industrial life. The hideous white slave traffic and the dread social evil must be corrected by education rather than by political propaganda. Laws must follow as the knowledge of the extent of the evil awakens the public conscience and the moral sense of the people is aroused. Woman will find her work as the educator who develops a trained and scientific opinion, not as the politician who must control votes. Women have a right to demand political responsibility if thereby the existing electorate would be improved “in its average moral tone, its intelligence, its political discrimination, its patriotism and attention to political duties.” The burden of proving that the enlarged electorate would be an improved electorate rests on those who demand the change. Many women are more intelligent, more moral than many men, but the morality and intelligence of women and men of the same opportunities and environment strike about the same average and it has yet to be shown that the doubling of the electorate, the wise, the foolish, the patriotic, the self-seeking, would improve the electorate. The enfranchised woman seems to give even less attention than man to political duties, if we are to trust election returns. If woman suffrage is to increase the danger which confronts us today in the indifferent and stay-at-home voter, the patriotic women have the right to protest against the imposition upon women of responsibilities which would not be fulfilled. The right to vote carries with it a moral responsibility of exercising the franchise, therefore the majority of women who do not believe in woman suffrage have the right to protest against this obligation. The life of the average woman is not so ordered as to give her first-hand knowledge of those things which are the essentials of sound government. Clean streets and pure milk are sure to come as the knowledge of sanitary living increases. Tariff reform, fiscal policies, international relations, those large endeavors which men now determine, are foreign to the concerns and pursuits of the average woman. She is worthily employed in other departments of life, and the vote will not help her to fulfill her obligations therein. The exceptional woman, who by some combination of circumstances is released from these obligations of the average woman, is today rendering public service which is distinctive because it is removed from personal, political ambitions. She has the right to serve the state and serves well in proportion to her freedom from party strife; she does not divert her efforts for the solution of problems to the machinery of political organization. Herein lies the exceptional woman’s distinctive contribution, not as a

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politician but as a disinterested factor working to render public service uncolored by political motives. Our exceptional American women are rapidly entering the ranks of those who thus serve the state. The patriotic women of England have been conspicuous in this sort of public service. One of the greatest of these was Octavia Hill, who more than any other one person helped solve the problem of the housing of the poor. Out of her real experience she wrote: I believe that men and women help one another because they are different, have different gifts and different spheres and that the world is made on the principle of mutual help. A serious loss to our country would arise if women entered into the arena of party struggle and political life. So far from raising the standard, I believe they would lose the power of helping to keep it up by their influence on the men who know and respect them. Political power would militate against their usefulness in the large field of public work in which so many are now doing noble and helpful service. This service is far more valuable than any voting power could possibly be. You can double the number of voters and achieve nothing, but have used up, in achieving nothing, whatever thought and time your women voters have given to such duties. Let the woman be set on finding her duties, not her rights – there is enough of struggle for place and power, enough of watching what is popular and will win votes, enough of effort to secure majorities: if woman would temper this wild struggle, let her seek to do her own work steadily and earnestly. It is woman’s right to be exempt from political responsibility in order that she may be free to render her best service to the state. The state has surrounded her with protective legislation in order that she may attain her highest efficiency in those departments of the world’s work for which her nature and training fit her.

5.  Gloria Steinem, “Living the Revolution” (May 31, 1970) 5 Gloria Steinem (b. 1934) was a leader of the second wave feminist movement in the sixties and seventies and co-founder of Ms. Magazine. In testimony delivered earlier in the same month in which she delivered this speech, she had urged Congress to take up women’s rights. What follows is her commencement address delivered at Vassar College in New York. President Simpson, members of the faculty, families and friends, first brave and courageous male graduates of Vassar, and Sisters. You may be surprised that I am a commencement speaker. You can’t possibly be as surprised as I am. In my experience, commencement speakers are gray-haired, respected creatures, heavy with the experience of power in the world and with Establishment honors. Which means, of course, that they are almost always men. But this is the year of Women’s Liberation. Or at least, it is the year the press has discovered a movement that has been strong for several years now, and reported it as a small, privileged, rather lunatic event instead of the major revolution in consciousness – in everyone’s consciousness – male or female that I believe it truly is. 5

Source: “Living the Revolution.” Vassar Quarterly (Fall 1970), 12–15. Reprinted with permission of Vassar Quarterly.

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It may have been part of that revolution that caused the senior class to invite me here – and I am grateful. It is certainly a part of that revolution that I, a devout nonspeaker, am managing to stand before you at all: I don’t know whether you will be grateful or not. The important thing is that we are spending this time together, considering the larger implications of a movement that some call “feminist” but should more accurately be called humanist; a movement that is an integral part of rescuing this country from its old, expensive patterns of elitism, racism, and violence. The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to un-learn. We are filled with the Popular Wisdom of several centuries just past, and we are terrified to give it up. Patriotism means obedience, age means wisdom, woman means submission, black means inferior – these are preconceptions embedded so deeply in our thinking that we honestly may not know that they are there. Unfortunately, authorities who write textbooks are sometimes subject to the same Popular Wisdom as the rest of us. They gather their proof around it, and end by becoming the theoreticians of the status quo. Using the most respectable of scholarly methods, for instance, English scientists proved definitively that the English were descended from the angels, while the Irish were descended from the apes. It was beautifully done, complete with comparative skull-measurements, and it was a rationale for the English domination of the Irish for more than 100 years. I try to remember that when I’m reading Arthur Jensen’s current and very impressive work on the limitations of black intelligence. Or when I’m reading Lionel Tiger on the inability of women to act in groups. The apes-and-angels example is an extreme one, but so may some of our recent assumptions be. There are a few psychologists who believe that anti-Communism may eventually be looked upon as a mental disease. It wasn’t easy for the English to give up their mythic superiority. Indeed, there are quite a few Irish who doubt that they have done it yet. Clearing our minds and government policies of outdated myths is proving to be at least difficult. But it is also inevitable. Whether it’s woman’s secondary role in society or the paternalistic role of the United States in the world, the old assumptions just don’t work anymore. Rollo May has a theory that I find comforting. There are three periods in history, he says – one in which myths are built up, one in which they obtain, and one in which they are torn down. Clearly, we are living in a time of myths being torn down. We look at the more stable period just past, and we think that such basic and terrifying change has never happened before. But, relatively, it has. Clinging to the comfortable beliefs of the past serves no purpose, and only slows down the growth of new forms to suit a new reality. Part of living this revolution is having the scales fall from our eyes. Every day we see small obvious truths that we had missed before. Our histories, for instance, have generally been written for and about white men. Inhabited countries were “discovered” when the first white male set foot there, and most of us learned more about any one European country than we did about Africa and Asia combined. I confess that, before some consciousness-changing of my own, I would have thought the Women History courses springing up around the country belonged in the same ­cultural ghetto as home economics. The truth is that we need Women’s Studies almost as much as we need Black Studies, and for exactly the same reason: too many of us have been allowed from a “good” education believing that everything from political power to scientific discovery was the province of white males. I don’t know about Vassar, but at Smith we learned almost nothing about women.

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We believed, for instance, that the vote had been “given” to women in some whimsical, benevolent fashion. We never learned about the long desperation of women’s struggle, or about the strength and wisdom of the women who led it. We heard about the men who risked their lives in the Abolitionist Movement, but seldom about the women; even though women, as in many movements of social reform, had played the major role. We knew a great deal more about the outdated, male-supremacist theories of Sigmund Freud than we did about societies in which women had equal responsibility, or even ruled. “Anonymous,” Virginia Woolf once said sadly, “was a woman.” I don’t mean to equate our problems of identity with those that flowed from slavery. But, as Gunnar Myrdal pointed out in his classic study, An American Dilemma, “In drawing a parallel between the position of, and the feeling toward, women and Negroes, we are uncovering a fundamental basis of our culture.” Blacks and women suffer from the same myths of childlike natures; smaller brains; inability to govern themselves, much less white men; limited job skills; identity as sex objects – and so on. Ever since slaves arrived on these shores and were given the legal status of wives – that is, chattel – our legal reforms have followed on each other’s heels. (With women, I might add, still lagging considerably behind. Nixon’s Commission on Women concluded that the Supreme Court was sanctioning discrimination against women – discrimination that it had long ago ruled unconstitutional in the case of blacks – but the Commission report remains mysteriously unreleased by the White House. An Equal Rights Amendment, now up again before the Senate, has been delayed by a male-chauvinist Congress for 47 years.) Neither blacks nor women have role-models in history: models of individuals who have been honored in authority outside the home. I remember when I was interviewing Mrs. Nixon just before the 1968 election, I asked her what woman in history she most admired and would want to be like. She said, “Mrs. Eisenhower.” When I asked her why, she thought for a moment, and said, “Because she meant so much to young people.” It was the last and most quizzical straw in a long, difficult interview, so I ventured a reply. I was in college during the Eisenhower years, I told her, and I didn’t notice any special influence that Mrs. Eisenhower had on youth. Mrs. Nixon just looked at me warily, and said, “You didn’t?” But afterwards, I decided I had been unfair. After all, neither one of us had that many people to choose from. As Margaret Mead has noted, the only women allowed to be dominant and respectable at the same time are widows. You have to do what society wants you to do, have a husband who dies, and then have power thrust upon you through no fault of your own. The whole thing seems very hard on the men. Before we go on to other reasons why Women’s Liberation is Man’s Liberation, too – and why this incarnation of the women’s movement is inseparable from the larger revolution – perhaps we should clear the air of a few more myths. The myth that women are biologically inferior, for instance. In fact, an equally good case could be made for the reverse. Women live longer than men. That’s always being cited as proof that we work them to death, but the truth is: women live longer than men even when groups being studied are monks and nuns. We survived Nazi concentration camps better, are protected against heart attacks by our female hormones, are less subject to many diseases, withstand surgery better, and are so much more durable at every stage of life that nature conceives 20 to 50 percent more males just to keep the balance going. The Auto Safety Committee of the American Medical Association has

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come to the conclusion that women are better drivers because they are less emotional than men. I never thought I would hear myself quoting the AMA, but that one was too good to resist. Men’s hunting activities are forever being pointed to as proof of Tribal Superiority. But while they were out hunting, women built houses, tilled the fields, developed animal husbandry, and perfected language. Men, isolated from each other out there in the bush, often developed into creatures that were fleet of foot, but not very bright. I don’t want to prove the superiority of one sex to another. That would only be repeating a male mistake. The truth is that we’re just not sure how many of our differences are biological, and how many are societal. In spite of all the books written on the subject, there is almost no such thing as a culture-free test. What we do know is that the differences between the two sexes, like the differences between races, are much less great than the differences to be found within each group. Therefore, requirements of a job can only be sensibly suited to the job itself. It deprives the country of talent to bundle any group of workers together by condition of birth. A second myth is that women are already being treated equally in this society. We ourselves have been guilty of perpetuating this myth, especially at upper economic levels where women have grown fond of being lavishly maintained as ornaments and children. The chains may be made of mink and wall-to-wall carpeting, but they are still chains. The truth is that a woman with a college degree working full-time makes less than a black man with a high school degree working full-time. And black women make least of all. In many parts of the country, New York City, for instance, a woman has no legally guaranteed right to rent an apartment, buy a house, get accommodations in a hotel, or be served in a public restaurant. She can be refused simply because of her sex. In some states, women cannot own property, and get longer jail sentences for the same crime. Women on welfare must routinely answer humiliating personal questions; male welfare recipients do not. A woman is the last to be hired, the first to be fired. Equal pay for equal work is the exception. Equal chance for advancement, especially at upper levels or at any level with authority over men, is rare enough to be displayed in a museum. As for our much-touted economic power, we make up only 5 percent of all the people in the country receiving $10,000 a year or more. And that includes all the famous rich widows. We are 51 percent of all stockholders, a dubious honor these days, but we hold only 18 percent of the stock – and that is generally controlled by men. The power women have as consumers is comparable to that power all of us currently have as voters: we can choose among items presented to us, but we have little chance to influence the presentation. Women’s greatest power to date is her nuisance value. The civil rights, peace, and consumer movements are impressive examples of that. In fact, the myth of economic matriarchy in this country is less testimony to our power than to the resentment of the little power we do have. You may wonder why we have submitted to such humiliations all these years; why, indeed, women will sometimes deny that they are second-class citizens at all. The answer lies in the psychology of second-classness. Like all such groups, we come to accept what society says about us. And that is the most terrible punishment of all. We believe that we can only make it in the world by “Uncle Tom-ing,” by a real or pretended subservience to white males. Even when we come to understand that we, as individuals, are not second-class, we still accept society’s assessment of our group – a phenomenon psychologists refer to as

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Internalized Aggression. From this stems the desire to be the only woman in an office, an academic department, or any other part of the man’s world. From this also stems women who put down their sisters – and my own profession of journalism has some of them. By writing or speaking of their non-conformist sisters in a disapproving, conformist way, they are essentially saying, “See what a real woman I am,” and expecting to be rewarded by ruling-class approval and favors. That is only beginning to change. It shouldn’t be surprising that women behave this way, too. After all, Internalized Aggression has for years been evident in black people who criticized each other (“See what a good Nigger I am”), or in Jews who ridiculed Jewishness (“See how I am different from other Jews”). It has been responsible for the phenomenon of wanting to be the only black family in the block, or the only Jew in the club. With women, the whole system reinforces this feeling of being a mere appendage. It’s hard for a man to realize just how full of self-doubt we become as a result. Locked into suburban homes with the intellectual companionship of three-year-olds; locked into bad jobs, watching less-qualified men get promoted above us; trapped into poverty by a system that supposes our only identity is motherhood – no wonder we become pathetically grateful for small favors. I don’t want to give the impression, though, that we want to join society exactly as it is. I don’t think most women want to pick up slimline briefcases and march off to meaningless, de-personalized jobs. Nor do we want to be drafted – and women certainly should be drafted: even the readers of Seventeen Magazine were recently polled as being overwhelmingly in favor of women in National Service – to serve in an unconstitutional, racist, body-count war like the one in Indochina. We want to liberate men from those inhuman roles as well. We want to share the work and responsibility, and to have men share equal responsibility for the children. Probably the ultimate myth is that children must have full-time mothers, and that liberated women make bad ones. The truth is that most American children seem to be suffering from too much mother and too little father. Women now spend more time with their homes and families than in any past or present society we know about. To get back to the sanity of the agrarian or joint-family system, we need free universal daycare. With that aid, as in Scandinavian countries, and with laws that permit women equal work and equal pay, men will be relieved of their role as sole breadwinner and stranger to his own children. No more alimony. Fewer boring wives, fewer child-like wives. No more so-called “Jewish mothers,” who are simply normal ambitious human beings with all their ambitions confined to the house. No more wives who fall apart with the first wrinkle, because they’ve been taught their total identity depends on their outsides. No more responsibility for another adult human being who has never been told she is responsible for her own life, and who sooner or later comes up with some version of, “If I hadn’t married you, I could have been a star.” And let’s say it one more time because it is such a great organizing tool, no more alimony. Women’s Liberation really is Men’s Liberation, too. The family system that will emerge is a great subject of anxiety. Probably there will be a variety of choice. Colleague marriages, such as young people have now, with both partners going to law school or the Peace Corps together: that’s one alternative. At least they share more than the kitchen and the bedroom. Communes, marriages that are valid for the child-rearing years only… there are many possibilities, but they can’t be predicted. The growth of new forms must be organic.

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The point is that Women’s Liberation is not destroying the American family; it is trying to build a human, compassionate alternative out of its ruins. Engels said that the paternalistic, 19th Century family system was the prototype of capitalism – with man, the capitalist; woman, the means of production; children the labor – and that the family would only change as the economic system did. Well, capitalism and the mythical American family seem to be in about the same shape. Of course, there are factors other than economic ones. As Margaret Mead says: No wonder marriage worked so well in the 19th century; people only lived to be fifty years old. And there are factors other than social reform that will influence women’s work success. “No wonder women do less well in business,” says a woman-executive. “They don’t have wives.” But the family is the first political unit, and to change it is the most radical act of all. Women have a special opportunity to live the revolution. By refusing to play their traditional role, they upset and displace the social structure around them. We may be subject to ridicule and suppression, just as men were when they refused to play their traditional role by going to war. But those refusals together are a hope for peace. Anthropologist Geoffrey Corer discovered that the few peaceful human tribes had a common characteristic: sex roles were not polarized, boys weren’t taught that manhood depended on aggression (or short hair or military skills), and girls weren’t taught that womanhood depended on submission (or working at home instead of the fields). For those who still fear that Women’s Liberation involves some loss of manhood, let me quote from the Black Panther code. Certainly, if the fear with which they are being met is any standard, the Panthers are currently the most potent male symbol of all. In Seize The Time, Bobby Seale writes, “Where there’s a Panther house, we try to live socialism. When there’s cooking to be done, both brothers and sisters cook. Both wash the dishes. The sisters don’t just serve and wait on the brothers. A lot of black nationalist organizations have the idea of regulating women to the role of serving their men, and they relate this to black manhood. But a real manhood is based on humanism, and it is not based on any form of oppression.” One final myth: that women are more moral than men. We are not more moral, we are only uncorrupted by power. But until the leaders of our country put into action the philosophy that Bobby Seale has set down until the old generation of male chauvinists is out of office – women in positions of power can increase our chances of peace a great deal. I personally would rather have had Margaret Mead as president during the past six years of Vietnam than either Johnson or Nixon. At least, she wouldn’t have had her masculinity to prove. Much of the trouble this country is in has to do with the Masculine Mystique: the idea that manhood somehow depends on the subjugation of other people. It’s a bipartisan problem. The challenge to all of us, and to you men and women who are graduating today, is to live a revolution, not to die for one. There has been too much killing, and the weapons are now far too terrible. This revolution has to change consciousness, to upset the injustice of our current hierarchy by refusing to honor it, and to live a life that enforces a new social justice. Because the truth is none of us can be liberated if other groups are not. Women’s Liberation is a bridge between black and white women, but also between the construction workers and the suburbanites, between Nixon’s Silent Majority and the young people

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they hate and fear. Indeed, there’s much more injustice and rage among working-class women than among the much-publicized white radicals. Women are sisters, they have many of the same problems, and they can communicate with each other. “You only get radicalized, as black activists always told us, on your own thing.” Then we make the connection to other injustices in society. The Women’s Movement is an important revolutionary bridge. And we are building it. I know it’s traditional on such an occasion to talk about “entering the world.” But this is an untraditional generation: you have made the campus part of the world. I thank you for it. I don’t need to tell you what awaits you in this country. You know that much better than I. I will only say that my heart goes with you, and that I hope we will be working together. Divisions of age, race, class, and sex are old-fashioned and destructive. One more thing, especially to the sisters, because I wish someone had said it to me; it would have saved me so much time. You don’t have to play one role in this revolutionary age above all others. If you’re willing to pay the price for it, you can do anything you want to do. And the price is worth it.

6.  Phyllis Schlafly, “What’s Wrong with ‘Equal Rights’ for Women?” (January 1, 1972) 6 Phyllis Schlafly (1924–2016) was an American attorney most famous for spearheading the opposition to the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution. Schlafly gave a version of this speech many times in her efforts. Of all the classes of people who ever lived, the American woman is the most privileged. We have the most rights and rewards, and the fewest duties. Our unique status is the result of a fortunate combination of circumstances. 1) We have the immense good fortune to live in a civilization which respects the family as the basic unit of society. This respect is part and parcel of our laws and our customs. It is based on the fact of life – which no legislation or agitation can erase – that women have babies and men don’t. If you don’t like this fundamental difference, you will have to take up your complaint with God because He created us this way. The fact that women, not men, have babies is not the fault of selfish and domineering men, or of the establishment, or of any clique of conspirators who want to oppress women. It’s simply the way God made us. Our Judeo-Christian civilization has developed the law and custom that, since women must bear the physical consequences of the sex act, men must be required to bear the other consequences and pay in other ways. These laws and customs decree that a man must carry his share by physical protection and financial support of his children and of the woman who bears his children, and also by a code of behavior which benefits and protects both the woman and the children. The Greatest Achievement of Women’s Rights This is accomplished by the institution of the family. Our respect for the family as the basic unit of society, which is ingrained in the laws and customs of our Judeo-Christian

6

Source: The Phyllis Schlafly Report, vol. 5, issue 7 (February 1972).

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civilization, is the greatest single achievement in the entire history of women’s rights. It assures a woman the most precious and important right of all – the right to keep her own baby and to be supported and protected in the enjoyment of watching her baby grow and develop. The institution of the family is advantageous for women for many reasons. After all, what do we want out of life? To love and be loved? Mankind has not discovered a better nest for a lifetime of reciprocal love. A sense of achievement? A man may search 30 to 40 years for accomplishment in his profession. A woman can enjoy real achievement when she is young – by having a baby. She can have the satisfaction of doing a job well – and being recognized for it. Do we want financial security? We are fortunate to have the great legacy of Moses, the Ten Commandments, especially this one: “Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land.” Children are a woman’s best social security – her best guarantee of social benefits such as old age pension, unemployment compensation, workman’s compensation, and sick leave. The family gives a woman the physical, financial and emotional security of the home – for all her life. The Financial Benefits of Chivalry 2) The second reason why American women are a privileged group is that we are the beneficiaries of a tradition of special respect for women which dates from the Christian Age of Chivalry. The honor and respect paid to Mary, the Mother of Christ, resulted in all women, in effect, being put on a pedestal. This respect for women is not just the lip service that politicians pay to “God, Motherhood, and the Flag.” It is not – as some youthful agitators seem to think – just a matter of opening doors for women, seeing that they are seated first, carrying their bundles, and helping them in and out of automobiles. Such good manners are merely the superficial evidences of a total attitude toward women which expresses itself in many more tangible ways, such as money. In other civilizations, such as the African and the American Indian, the men strut around wearing feathers and beads and hunting and fishing (great sport for men!), while the women do all the hard, tiresome drudgery including the tilling of the soil (if any is done), the hewing of wood, the making of fires, the carrying of water, as well as the cooking, sewing and caring for babies. This is not the American way because we were lucky enough to inherit the traditions of the Age of Chivalry. In America, a man’s first significant purchase is a diamond for his bride, and the largest financial investment of his life is a home for her to live in. American husbands work hours of overtime to buy a fur piece or other finery to keep their wives in fashion, and to pay premiums on their life insurance policies to provide for her comfort when she is a widow (benefits in which he can never share). In the states which follow the English common law, a wife has a dower right in her husband’s real estate which he cannot take away from her during life or by his will. A man cannot dispose of his real estate without his wife’s signature. Any sale is subject to her 1/3 interest. Women fare even better in the states which follow the Spanish and French community-property laws, such as California, Arizona, Texas and Louisiana. The basic philosophy of the Spanish/French law is that a wife’s work in the home is just as valuable as a husband’s work at his job. Therefore, in community-property states, a wife owns one-half of all the property and income her husband earns during their marriage, and he cannot take it away from her. In Illinois, as a result of agitation by “equal rights” fanatics, the real-estate dower laws were

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repealed as of January 1, 1972. This means that in Illinois a husband can now sell the family home, spend the money on his girlfriend or gamble it away, and his faithful wife of 30 years can no longer stop him. “Equal rights” fanatics have also deprived women in Illinois and in some other states of most of their basic common-law rights to recover damages for breach of promise to marry, seduction, criminal conversation, and alienation of affections. The Real Liberation of Women 3) The third reason why American women are so well off is that the great American free enterprise system has produced remarkable inventors who have lifted the backbreaking “women’s work” from our shoulders. In other countries and in other eras, it was truly said that “Man may work from sun to sun, but woman’s work is never done.” Other women have labored every waking hour – preparing food on wood-burning stoves, making flour, baking bread in stone ovens, spinning yarn, making clothes, making soap, doing the laundry by hand, heating irons, making candles for light and fires for warmth, and trying to nurse their babies through illnesses without medical care. The real liberation of women from the backbreaking drudgery of centuries is the American free enterprise system which stimulated inventive geniuses to pursue their talents – and we all reap the profits. The great heroes of women’s liberation are not the straggly-haired women on television talk shows and picket lines, but Thomas Edison who brought the miracle of electricity to our homes to give light and to run all those labor-saving devices – the equivalent, perhaps, of a half-dozen household servants for every middle-class American woman. Or Elias Howe who gave us the sewing machine which resulted in such an abundance of readymade clothing. Or Clarence Birdseye who invented the process for freezing foods. Or Henry Ford, who mass-produced the automobile so that it is within the price-range of every American, man or woman. A major occupation of women in other countries is doing their daily shopping for food, which requires carrying their own containers and standing in line at dozens of small shops. They buy only small portions because they can’t carry very much and have no refrigerator or freezer to keep a surplus anyway. Our American free enterprise system has given us the gigantic food and packaging industry and beautiful supermarkets, which provide an endless variety of foods, prepackaged for easy carrying and a minimum of waiting. In America, women have the freedom from the slavery of standing in line for daily food. Thus, household duties have been reduced to only a few hours a day, leaving the American woman with plenty of time to moonlight. She can take a full or part-time paying job, or she can indulge to her heart’s content in a tremendous selection of interesting educational or cultural or homemaking activities. The Fraud of the Equal Rights Amendment In the last couple of years, a noisy movement has sprung up agitating for “women’s rights.” Suddenly, everywhere we are afflicted with aggressive females on television talk shows yapping about how mistreated American women are, suggesting that marriage has put us in some kind of “slavery,” that housework is menial and degrading, and – perish the thought – that women are discriminated against. New “women’s liberation” organizations are popping up, agitating and demonstrating, serving demands on public officials, getting wide press coverage always, and purporting to

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speak for some 100,000,000 American women. It’s time to set the record straight. The claim that American women are downtrodden and unfairly treated is the fraud of the ­century. The truth is that American women never had it so good. Why should we lower ourselves to “equal rights” when we already have the status of special privilege? The proposed Equal Rights Amendment states: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” So what’s wrong with that? Well, here are a few examples of what’s wrong with it. This Amendment will absolutely and positively make women subject to the draft. Why any woman would support such a ridiculous and un-American proposal as this is beyond comprehension. Why any Congressman who had any regard for his wife, sister or daughter would support such a proposition is just as hard to understand. Foxholes are bad enough for men, but they certainly are not the place for women – and we should reject any proposal which would put them there in the name of “equal rights.” It is amusing to watch the semantic chicanery of the advocates of the Equal Rights Amendment when confronted with this issue of the draft. They evade, they sidestep, they try to muddy up the issue, but they cannot deny that the Equal Rights Amendment will positively make women subject to the draft. Congresswoman Margaret Heckler’s answer to this question was, Don’t worry, it will take two years for the Equal Rights Amendment to go into effect, and we can rely on President Nixon to end the Vietnam War before then! Literature distributed by Equal Rights Amendment supporters confirms that “under the Amendment a draft law which applied to men would apply also to women.” The Equal Rights literature argues that this would be good for women so they can achieve their “equal rights” in securing veterans’ benefits. Another bad effect of the Equal Rights Amendment is that it will abolish a woman’s right to child support and alimony, and substitute what the women’s libbers think is a more “equal” policy, that “such decisions should be within the discretion of the Court and should be made on the economic situation and need of the parties in the case.” Under present American laws, the man is always required to support his wife and each child he caused to be brought into the world. Why should women abandon these good laws – by trading them for something so nebulous and uncertain as the “discretion of the Court”? The law now requires a husband to support his wife as best as his financial situation permits, but a wife is not required to support her husband (unless he is about to become a public charge). A husband cannot demand that his wife go to work to help pay for family expenses. He has the duty of financial support under our laws and customs. Why should we abandon these mandatory wife-support and child support laws so that a wife would have an “equal” obligation to take a job? By law and custom in America, in case of divorce, the mother always is given custody of her children unless there is overwhelming evidence of mistreatment, neglect or bad character. This is our special privilege because of the high rank that is placed on motherhood in our society. Do women really want to give up this special privilege and lower themselves to “equal rights”, so that the mother gets one child and the father gets the other? I think not. […] What “Women’s Lib” Really Means Many women are under the mistaken impression that “women’s lib” means more job employment opportunities for women, equal pay for equal work, appointments of women to high positions, admitting more women to medical schools, and other

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desirable objectives which all women favor. We all support these purposes, as well as any necessary legislation which would bring them about. But all this is only a sweet syrup which covers the deadly poison masquerading as “women’s lib.” The women’s libbers are radicals who are waging a total assault on the family, on marriage, and on children. Don’t take my word for it – read their own literature and prove to yourself what these characters are trying to do. The most pretentious of the women’s liberation magazines is called Ms., and subtitled “The New Magazine For Women,” with Gloria Steinem listed as president and secretary. Reading the Spring 1972 issue of Ms. gives a good understanding of women’s lib, and the people who promote it. It is anti-family, anti-children, and pro-abortion. It is a series of sharp-tongued, highpitched whining complaints by unmarried women. They view the home as a prison, and the wife and mother as a slave. To these women’s libbers, marriage means dirty dishes and dirty laundry. One article lauds a woman’s refusal to carry up the family laundry as “an act of extreme courage.” Another tells how satisfying it is to be a lesbian (page 117). The women’s libbers don’t understand that most women want to be wife, mother, and homemaker – and are happy in that role. The women’s libbers actively resent the mother who stays at home with her children and likes it that way. The principal purpose of Ms.’s shrill tirade is to sow seeds of discontent among happy, married women so that all women can be unhappy in some new sisterhood of frustrated togetherness. Obviously intrigued by the 170 clauses of exemptions from marital duties given to Jackie Kennedy, and the special burdens imposed on Aristotle Onassis, in the pre-marriage contract they signed, Ms. recommends two women’s lib marriage contracts. The “Utopian marriage contract” has a clause on “sexual rights and freedoms” which approves “arrangements such as having Tuesdays off from one another,” and the husband giving “his consent to abortion in advance.” The “Shulmans’ marriage agreement” includes such petty provisions as “wife strips beds, husband remakes them,” and “Husband does dishes on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Wife does Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, Friday is split…” If the baby cries in the night, the chore of “handling” the baby is assigned as follows: “Husband does Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Wife does Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, Friday is split…” Presumably, if the baby cries for his mother on Tuesday night, he would be informed that the marriage contract prohibits her from answering. Of course, it is possible, in such a loveless home, that the baby would never call for his mother at all. Who put up the money to launch this 130-page slick-paper assault on the family and motherhood? A count of the advertisements in Ms. shows that the principal financial backer is the liquor industry. There are 26 liquor ads in this one initial issue. Of these, 13 are expensive full-page color ads, as opposed to only 18 full-page ads from all other sources combined, most of which are in the cheaper black-and-white. Another women’s lib magazine, called Women, tells the American woman that she is a prisoner in the “solitary confinement” and “isolation” of marriage. The magazine promises that it will provide women with “escape from isolation … release from boredom,” and that it will “break the barriers … that separate wife, mistress and ­secretary … heterosexual women and homosexual women.” These women’s libbers do, indeed, intend to “break the barriers” of the Ten Commandments and the sanctity of the family. It hasn’t occurred to them that a woman’s best “escape from isolation and boredom” is – not a magazine subscription to boost her “stifled ego” – but a husband and children who love her. The first issue of Women

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contains 68 pages of such proposals as “The BITCH Manifesto,” which promotes the line that “Bitch is Beautiful and that we have nothing to lose. Nothing whatsoever.” Another article promotes an organization called W.I.T.C.H. (Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell), “an action arm of Women’s Liberation.” In intellectual circles, a New York University professor named Warren T. Farrell has provided the rationale for why men should support women’s lib. When his speech to the American Political Science Association Convention is stripped of its egghead verbiage, his argument is that men should eagerly look forward to the day when they can enjoy free sex and not have to pay for it. The husband will no longer be “saddled with the tremendous guilt feelings” when he leaves his wife with nothing after she has given him her best years. If a husband loses his job, he will no longer feel compelled to take any job to support his family. A husband can go “out with the boys” to have a drink without feeling guilty. Alimony will be eliminated. Women’s Libbers Do Not Speak for Us The “women’s lib” movement is not an honest effort to secure better jobs for women who want or need to work outside the home. This is just the superficial sweet-talk to win broad support for a radical “movement.” Women’s lib is a total assault on the role of the American woman as wife and mother, and on the family as the basic unit of society. Women’s libbers are trying to make wives and mothers unhappy with their career, make them feel that they are “second-class citizens” and “abject slaves.” Women’s libbers are promoting free sex instead of the “slavery” of marriage. They are promoting Federal “day-care centers” for babies instead of homes. They are promoting abortions instead of families. Why should we trade in our special privileges and honored status for the alleged advantage of working in an office or assembly line? Most women would rather cuddle a baby than a typewriter or factory machine. Most women find that it is easier to get along with a husband than a foreman or office manager. Offices and factories require many more menial and repetitious chores than washing dishes and ironing shirts. Women’s libbers do not speak for the majority of American women. American women do not want to be liberated from husbands and children. We do not want to trade our birthright of the special privileges of American women – for the mess of pottage called the Equal Rights Amendment. Modern technology and opportunity have not discovered any nobler or more satisfying or more creative career for a woman than marriage and motherhood. The wonderful advantage that American women have is that we can have all the rewards of that number-one career, and still moonlight with a second one to suit our intellectual, cultural or financial tastes or needs. And why should the men acquiesce in a system which gives preferential rights and lighter duties to women? In return, the men get the pearl of great price: a happy home, a faithful wife, and children they adore. If the women’s libbers want to reject marriage and motherhood, it’s a free country and that is their choice. But let’s not permit these women’s libbers to get away with pretending to speak for the rest of us. Let’s not permit this tiny minority to degrade the role that most women prefer. Let’s not let these women’s libbers deprive wives and mothers of the rights we now possess. Tell your Senators NOW that you want them to vote NO on the Equal Rights Amendment. Tell your television and radio stations that you want equal time to present the case FOR marriage and motherhood.

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7.  Ambassador Samantha Power, Commencement Address at Barnard College (May 17, 2015) 7 Samantha Power (b. 1979) is a human rights advocate whose 2013 book on the US response to genocide, A Problem from Hell, won a Pulitzer prize. She was serving as the United States Ambassador to the UN when she gave this speech at Barnard College in New York City. Good afternoon, President Spar, faculty, trustees, alumni, families, and friends of the strong and beautiful Barnard graduates! Congratulations, class of 2015! Columbia grad Madeleine Albright has said, “It used to be that the only way a woman could truly make her foreign policy views felt was by marrying a diplomat, and then pouring tea on an offending ambassador’s lap.” I’m here to tell you that in 2015, we have other options! I’m truly honored to be here, and to be among the amazing women, and men, on this stage, and to be with the amazing class of 2015 – I’m so honored that I invited my parents to your graduation. And while we’re at it, let’s give a huge round of applause to all the parents and loved ones in the audience. Your great school came into existence largely due to the vision of a remarkable woman, Annie Nathan Meyer. Meyer didn’t get the kind of schooling you got, or I got. Her mother kept her home as a small child because she wanted company. Meyer read voraciously, finishing all of Dickens’ books by the age of seven. Yeah, seriously. When she was eleven, her mother died, and while her father agreed to let her go to school, he was so overprotective that he kept her home whenever there was bad weather. When Meyer learned about a special college course for women at Columbia University, she set about secretly studying for examinations, which she passed on her first try. When she finally told her father, she later wrote, “He drew me gently and lovingly to him and announced, ‘You will never be married… Men hate intelligent wives.’” Meyer decided to go to Columbia anyway. It was not what she had hoped. Women were not allowed into lectures; instead, they were given a reading list, a short meeting or two with the professor, and then an exam. When Meyer sat for her first exam, she found the questions were based entirely on the lectures that she had been barred from attending. Feeling what she called a “devastating sense of desolation,” she answered as best she could. And though she passed, she eventually dropped out, and, soon after, started her full-court press to secure the education for women that she had been denied. Four years later, in 1889, as we know, Barnard College – your college – was founded. As Barnard finishes its 125th school year, it is safe to say that the cause of equality has come a very, very, very long way. But what I want to talk to you about today is how some of the remaining barriers to true equality can, and must, be overcome. First, true equality will mean not letting our doubts silence our voices. We live in a time where women have made tremendous strides, particularly here in the United States. And you all know the statistics. Women earn 60 percent of all undergraduate and graduate degrees; hold more than half of all professional-level jobs; and 7

Source: Barnard College, https://barnard.edu/student-services/commencement/commencementarchives/commencement-2015/samantha-power-del. Used by permission of the author. All rights reserved.

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study after study shows that companies employing greater numbers of women outperform their competitors. And you know that, at the end of your four years, you are as well-equipped as any Barnard graduating class to make your mark. So why do you still feel that persistent self-doubt? That fear of making mistakes? And why do those doubts sometimes get in the way of your voices being heard? I wish I had the answer. Instead, all I can tell you is that we all experience that feeling – even if it’s not obvious on the outside. I have even adopted a name for it – the Bat Cave; it’s that dark place in your head where all the voices tell you every reason you can’t do something. Let me give you an example. Rewind to August 2008. I am working as a senior advisor on the campaign for then-Senator Barack Obama – who has just earned the Democratic nomination for President. And I find out that I’m pregnant with my first child. Now, I have an amazing husband, and this news – it’s seismic. I am over the moon. And I tell no one at work. Lots of nods, I bet, back here and up there. I have never gone through this before, and I am worried that if I advertise my blissful state, it will affect how seriously I will be taken by the campaign, and potentially even shut me out of the kind of job that could make an impact. Everything I know of then-Senator Obama and the people around him tells me at the time that this makes zero sense. After all, this is a man who was raised by a single, working mother. A man whose brilliant wife worked while raising two daughters. A man who would go on to demonstrate daily as President his commitment to supporting working moms and dads. But at the time, I am way too deep in the Bat Cave to see any of that. Eventually, it is my body that tells people the news—not me. And I acquired quite a collection of scarves. I ended up having two babies while spending four years at the White House, and thereafter still managed to get to serve in my dream job, representing the United States at the United Nations. But if I felt the way I did with a boss like mine, I can only imagine how other women feel – the ecstasy of a pregnancy clouded by the fear it could cause severe professional damage. Last year, when the Ukraine crisis began, I momentarily experienced another version of this anxiety. Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, is trying to lop off part of its neighbor, Ukraine – a clear violation of the rules that the United Nations was created to defend. An urgent UN Security Council session is called on Russia’s attempted takeover of Crimea. I take my seat, and my mind recalls Prague 1968, Budapest 1956, and some epic occasions in the twentieth century when Ambassadors Adlai Stevenson, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Madeleine Albright, and other legends made memorable, forceful interventions at the United Nations on behalf of the United States. Then it dawns on me: that’s me now! I’m the United States! Deep in the Bat Cave, I think of the consequences if my response – the United States’ response – is too forceful, or not forceful enough. I think of the overwhelming responsibility that comes with speaking on behalf of America and the ideals we stand for. And I think of the people of Ukraine who are counting on me. And I speak. The fact is that doubt – and his more lovable big sister, self-awareness – both are more pronounced among women. Turns out Batwoman’s cave often has more square footage than Batman’s. True equality will not mean shedding our doubts or our self-awareness – but rather not letting them quiet us when we should be speaking up. There are more than enough

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forces out there doing that without needing our help. And it will mean that, while everyone will have moments of uncertainty – and humility is an especially prized quality – women should not have to worry that if we stumble, it will be more noticed than when men do the same. But it is not enough to find our own voices. True equality also requires that we learn to hear, and lift up, the voices of those whom others choose not to hear. This is my second point: You have to teach yourself to see the people and communities who live in society’s blind spots. Of course, everyone should strive to do this. But as women who, even to this day, know what it feels like to be unheard or unseen, we have an additional responsibility. I think the burden of being treated differently is also our strength – because it gives us the capacity to notice when others are treated differently. To see the blind spots. That includes the discussion of gender identity on campus, which the Barnard community – and particularly your class – has embraced. We must see that seemingly simple actions that most of us don’t have to think twice about – the bathroom we walk into; the gender listed on our driver’s licenses; the name people use to address us; the boxes “male” and “female” on a college application – can be a source of profound anguish for others. We must recognize the cruel and hostile treatment that transgender people experience in so many communities, which, according to one study, has contributed to 40 percent of transgender people in the United States attempting suicide during the course of their lives. We must all work toward the goal of ensuring equal rights for all people – lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. And while we have a very long way to go, I’m extremely proud to work for an administration that has lifted Medicare’s ban on covering gender reassignment surgery, and whose Justice Department has decided to take on cases of discrimination based on an individual’s gender identity, including transgender status, under the Civil Rights Act. Now again, it is no coincidence that women’s colleges have been among the first to embrace this discussion. Women know what it feels like to have to fight to be part of institutions whose doors should never have been closed to them. You often hear people say that past generations struggled so that you would not have to. But I say, past generations struggled so you would be free to fight on behalf of someone else. The idea of seeing the struggles of others around you – whether the other is a gender or an ethnic or religious group, or even an entire nation that usually does not have a voice – is one of the principles that has defined President Obama’s foreign policy. We know that America is stronger, that our policies are more effective, and that the world is better off when America is listening. And that includes listening to countries and communities that often feel invisible to the world’s superpowers. That is why, when I started as the United States Ambassador to the UN a year and a half ago, I decided to visit as many of the other 192 UN ambassadors as I could, regardless of the size or the geopolitical heft of the country that they represent. By visiting their missions, rather than having them travel to ours, as was common practice, I would be able to see the national art they wanted to showcase, the family photos on their desks, the books that they had carried with them long distances to America. And I could show them America’s respect and our curiosity. So far, I’ve visited 119 countries’ missions. And when I visit, I try to put my long list of policy asks aside. Instead, I ask the ambassadors about their upbringings, about how they became diplomats, what they are most proud of about their countries.

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True equality will mean not just seeing the unseen, but also finding a way to make invisible problems visible – and this is my third point. I think the contemporary conversation about the challenge that women face in balancing a demanding job with raising a family is important. Women are opening up about how overwhelmed they feel trying to “have it all.” Back in 2013, when I arrived in my job, I was still nursing my one-year-old daughter as I tried to move my family to New York and find schools for my two kids – and no, I did not enroll my then-four-year-old in a Kaplan course so he could get into a New York pre-school. I had to do all this at the same time, roughly, that the Syrian regime decided to stage massive chemical weapons attacks against its people, horrific atrocities were being committed in the Central African Republic, and a new government was cracking down on the opposition in Egypt. When asked by friends whether I subscribed to “lean in,” I would instead describe my philosophy then as “hang on.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has put it even better – “lean on.” While Ambassador, I have spoken in public a fair amount about the ways my sixyear-old, my now six-year-old son Declan, interacts with my new life – making visible a version of what goes on behind the scenes in many homes. Like most young kids with their parents, he seems to delight in interrupting me when I’m on the phone. “Mommy,” he says, “Can I ask you something?” I shake my head and I whisper, “I’m on the phone.” He says, “Mommy it’s important.” “I’ll be off in a minute.” “But Mommy, what’s the score of the Nationals game?” he says. I beg him to let me finish the call. But he is insistent. “Mommy, I said it’s important.” And I hold my hand over the phone and say – “Mine too, this is important too” – I may well be talking to the UN Secretary-General, a UN envoy on a crackling phone line from a war zone, or a fellow diplomat that I’m trying to put the squeeze on. But nothing persuades Declan. And when this little showdown has abated, and he gives up – which after nine or ten exchanges he does, usually, he invariably storms off in a huff, usually grumbling some version of, “Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine!” He’s had it up to here with Ukraine. Now, the juggling act that I am attempting pales compared to that faced by moms who are raising kids alone; or who struggle to provide for families on a minimum wage that is not a livable wage; or who risk losing their jobs if they have to stay home to care for a sick child. But I share these stories because – even with all the support that I am lucky enough to have – the balancing is hard and making that visible might be useful to somebody somewhere. Of course, it is not just our personal challenges that we must make visible. There are far bigger and more important problems that we have to shine a bright light on – like the dark chapters of our own nation’s history. Let me give you one of the most chilling examples. Between 1877 and 1950, nearly 4,000 African Americans were lynched in 12 Southern states, according to a remarkable report released this year by the Equal Justice Initiative. In 1916, a man named Jeff Brown was lynched in Mississippi for accidentally bumping into a white girl while running to catch a train. In 1940, Jessie Thorton was lynched in Alabama for failing to address a white police officer as “Mister.” Many of the lynchings were public spectacles, advertised in advance in newspapers. Vendors hawked popcorn and lemonade. Families had photos taken by the bodies of the victims as souvenirs. In 1893, 10,000 people came to watch the lynching of Henry Smith in Paris, Texas. One of the most alarming findings of the Equal Justice Initiative report is that there are virtually no public memorials to these killings. South Carolina, which witnessed

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164 lynchings during this period, has only a few public markers of where they occurred. But the state has at least 170 memorials to Confederate soldiers of the Civil War. Fifty years after Selma, and 150 after the end of the Civil War – at a time where there remains such enduring racial inequalities – these sites should not be invisible. We have to stop looking past them. Which is why finding ways to mark more of these sites – as the Equal Justice Initiative plans to do – is such an essential step. To memorialize the Holocaust – the most unspeakable atrocity of the 20th ­century – a German artist named Gunther Denmig began installing what he called stolpersteine, or stumbling stones. He placed the tiny, four-inch cubes – which simply note the name, date of birth and, when known, the death of an individual victim – in the ground outside the Holocaust victim’s former home. He started in Cologne, Germany, in 1992, with 250 little stones. Since then, Denmig has laid some 48,000 stolpersteine in 18 countries. Any of you who have stumbled upon one knows the impact. The stone telescopes history. In humanizing a single victim – you feel it, if only for a minute, the incomprehensible loss of six million people. Of course, we cannot limit ourselves to surfacing the dark parts of our past; we must do the same right here in the present. Consider the enduring problem of sexual violence on college campuses, only a tiny fraction of which is reported by victims. In spite of this problem, we have too often seen colleges and universities falling short of adequately investigating and disciplining perpetrators, and of protecting victims. And yet – even as we are aware of the seriousness of this problem, it takes a woman picking up a mattress and carrying it around her campus to make people really see it. A mattress that a good number of the women in this graduating class have helped carry. And men from Columbia, too. This challenge of rendering the invisible visible is one I face every day at the United Nations, where the people most directly affected by the policies discussed are often far removed from sight and mind. We talk so often in terms of thousands or even millions of people that it’s easy to lose a sense of what one person is – and why even a single human being’s dignity is so important. So, wherever possible, the United States tries to bring those voices into the debate as a way of sharpening understanding of the human consequences of what can otherwise feel like abstract challenges. Last September, as the Ebola outbreak was spreading exponentially in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, the most dire evidence-based projections suggested more than a million people would be infected if the international community failed to mount a swift and massive response. Yet most countries were doing far too little to stop the outbreak. Worse, several countries in the region were sealing their borders out of fear, preventing crucial aid from reaching those in need. So the United States convened the first-ever emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on a public health crisis – and instead of simply having UN officials present statistics and charts, we arranged for a video link from the Security Council to the capital of Liberia, where a 38-year-old healthcare worker named Jackson Naimah was asked to describe what was happening in his country. Jackson, who was working at a Médecins Sans Frontières Ebola clinic, described people dying outside the gates because the clinic was overflowing and had run out of beds to take more patients. He described having to turn away a boy with all the symptoms of the virus, whose father had died a week earlier, and he recalled thinking, “This boy is going to take a taxi, and he is going to go home to his family, and he will infect them.” He told the diplomats crammed into

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the UN chamber: “I feel that the future of my country is hanging in the balance. If the international community does not stand up, we will all be wiped out.” As Jackson spoke, you could hear a pin drop in the Security Council. People who had not really seen Ebola up to that time were forced to grapple with its monstrous efficiency. And you could feel the momentum in the room shift as, one by one, countries spoke with a greater sense of urgency about the need to stand up rather than stand by. Today, we haven’t just bent the curve of the epidemic, we are closing in on ending it. And we try, we try, to seize every chance we have to bring voices like Jackson’s into discussions at the United Nations. And, when a conflict or a prison cell or some other barrier prevents these individuals from speaking for themselves, we try to describe their experiences in a way that others will hear. Now, I have talked about what it will mean to secure lasting equality – slaying the bats in our bat caves; taking on the struggles of others seeking dignity; and using a range of means – from mattresses to human contact – to make the invisible visible. This brings me to my last point, and arguably the simplest. True equality is going to require showing – not telling, but showing – people that change is possible. Let me tell you what other countries see today when they look at the United States delegation to the UN. They see a woman Permanent Representative – one of only 37 women permanent representatives out of 193 ambassadors to the UN – they also see two other women Ambassadors for the United States, Michele Sison and Isobel Coleman, all three of us working mothers. And when the General Assembly is held each September, the world sees the U.S. delegation led by an African-American man – our President. What we look like to the world matters. Because we know, empirically, that people’s belief systems and biases can be shifted dramatically by what they see. In West Bengal, India, for example, a political affirmative action program reserved spots for women in village governments. Within seven years, a study found, men’s individual biases against the capacity of women leaders almost fully disappeared; and women have become more likely to run for – and win – local seats. Parents have developed higher aspirations for their daughters, and girls’ expectations have increased for themselves. I can tell you it’s true personally, as well. As a girl growing up in Ireland – where my family lived until I was nine – I watched my mother attend medical school while playing world-class squash and caring for me and my kid brother. I also learned from the stories my mother and father, Dr. Vera Delaney and Edmund Bourke – both kidney doctors – brought home about their patients. I loved the way they saw their patients not as a spreadsheet of symptoms and diseases, but as individuals. And I learned from the way they knew how to listen to them, and glean the details that others may have missed. There is no question in my mind that growing up with my mother as my model gave me the confidence – or the hubris – to think that covering the women’s volleyball team for my college newspaper was experience enough to send me to the Balkans to become a war correspondent. Thanks, Mom. And there’s no question that I took from both my parents that – in work, in friendship, in love – we must understand where people around us are coming from, what motivates them, what saddens them, what inspires them, and how they got where they are. And it’s worth remembering to the extent to which we – any of us here – see the world the way we do; make it to the heights we reach; and experience days of such great pride like this one – it’s worth remembering that all of that starts with the people we saw first. When you hug them after this, thank them for that. And you can give them a round of applause now, too.

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As I’m wrapping up, I want to leave you with one last image. As you know, there are few places where women and girls have endured greater hardship – or been less visible – than in Afghanistan. Under Taliban rule, women couldn’t even walk outside without a male relative and a burqa. No girls were allowed to go to school, and no women served in positions of authority. Today, notwithstanding the persistence of the Taliban and its monstrous attacks against civilians, more than three million Afghan girls are in school. Women hold 28 percent of seats in Afghanistan’s Parliament – a higher proportion, I would note, than in the United States Congress. And today, women can not only walk outside without a man or a burqa, but members of Afghanistan’s Women’s National Cycling Team are racing down the country’s roads on their bikes. Team members are pinched for resources, but big on courage. Some drivers yell at them and threaten them, but they ride on. One day, a man on a motorcycle reached out and tried to grab at the captain, causing her to crash and hurt her back. But today she is back on her bike, leading more than 40 other women training with the team. One of the team members, Malika Yousufi, not only wants to become the first Afghan woman – but the first woman, period – to compete in the Tour de France. She told a reporter, “Nothing will stop us.” Now, imagine just for a minute, what it must feel like to be a little girl from a rural town in Afghanistan and to suddenly see those 40 women, in a single file, flying down the road. To see something for the first time that you couldn’t have believed possible. Think about where your mind would go, about the shockwave that image would send through your system. Think what it would allow you to believe possible. You would never be able to think the same way again. That impact, that is what equality is all about. It is a memorial that forces us to see a dark part of our history. A woman who picks up a mattress to show us a problem we are overlooking. A woman or girl in a classroom, or on a bike, or in the water – clearing a path that otherwise would have seemed closed or unimaginable. Now it’s your turn to climb on the bike. As Malika said, nothing can stop you. What will you make people see? Thank you, and congratulations again, Barnard Class of 2015!

8.  Christina Hoff Sommers, “The Real Oppression that Campus Feminists Aren’t Talking About” (June 8, 2015) 8 Christina Hoff Sommers (b. 1950) is a Senior Fellow Emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute. She is the author most notably of Who Stole Feminism (1994) and The War Against Boys (2000). The following presentation is found on her video blog, The Factual Feminist. Atena Farghadani is an Iranian artist. She was arrested in August of 2014. 12 members of the Iranian revolutionary guard came to her house, blindfolded her, and took her to prison, and what exactly was the crime? She posted a satirical cartoon on Facebook to 8

Source: YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=O47bXIznf-E. By permission of the author. All rights reserved.

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protest actions of the Iranian Parliament. Parliament was proposing to restrict access to birth control. Now, she was charged with spreading propaganda, insulting members of Parliament through paintings. Once in prison she continued to paint and draw; she flattened paper cups and made drawings. Well this was against prison rules. She was then denied paper cups. So she took some cups from the bathroom into her cell and when this was discovered she was beaten, she was sexually assaulted. Atena Farghadani is just one of millions of women and men whose basic rights have been ruthlessly violated, and I’ve been to International women’s conferences and met women’s rights activists from countries like Yemen and Iran, Egypt and Cambodia. They are struggling for freedoms that most women in the West just take for granted. And they’re organizing against barbaric practices like child marriage, forced veiling, honor killings, and acid burnings. Now many of these women are asking for moral, intellectual, and material support from American women’s groups, but American feminists are relatively silent about these injustices, especially feminists on campus. During the late 70s and 80s there were massive demonstrations on American campuses about racial apartheid in South Africa. There’s nothing remotely comparable today on the campus against gender apartheid, which is prevalent in large parts of the world. Well, I think I know why, too. Many young feminists are too preoccupied with their own supposed victimhood to make common cause with women like Atena Farghadani. If you look at the texts used in gender studies classes or visit feminist blogs or websites, you are going to find alarm and outrage over the allegedly oppressive state of American women. Consider something like the Penguin Atlas of Women in the World. This is typical of what one finds in Gender Studies 101, but it ranks the United States along with Uganda and Somalia in terms of women being kept in their place. Now why is this? Well because apparently in both countries, the editor says, “patriarchal assumptions operate in potent combination with fundamental religious interpretations.” And the editor explains further that in Uganda a man can claim an unmarried woman is his wife by raping her. As for the United States she notes that our state legislators have passed hundreds of anti-abortion measures. Well never mind that the Ugandan practice is barbaric. The controversy surrounding abortion in the United States is just a sign of a democracy working out its messy disagreements. This past year I visited Yale, UCLA, UC Luis Obispo, as well as Oberlin and Georgetown. I found activist feminist students absorbed in the task of liberating themselves from the grasp of the oppressive and violent patriarchal rape culture that surrounds them. They had trigger warnings and safe spaces and micro-aggression watches, all to save themselves from the ravages of the male hegemony. It’s not that they don’t feel bad for women in places like Iraq, but they think that they share a similar fate. Except they don’t. They are free women. They are the beneficiaries of two major waves of feminism. Their rights are fully protected by law. Samantha Power is a very able US ambassador to the United Nations, and she’s a prominent champion of human rights. She recently addressed the graduating class at Barnard College, but instead of urging graduates to support women struggling against oppression in places like Afghanistan, she congratulated them for waging a similar struggle of their own, and she cited Emma Sulkowicz and her mattress as a symbol of women coping with the struggle against oppression. And she compared the young women in Afghanistan struggling for gender justice with American college women. Never mind the questionable basis of Sulkowicz’s public shaming campaign with her

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mattress; Sulkowicz lives in a country where laws, institutions, and customs protect her. The women in Afghanistan are coping with the Taliban. Sulkowicz is coping with Columbia classmates. The US ambassador to the United Nations should be clear about that distinction. American women, especially college women, are among the freest and most self-determining in the world, and instead of retreating into safe spaces and focusing on their own imagined oppression, they should be reaching out to women like Atena Farghani. Oppressive patriarchies do exist, but the United States is not one of them. Millions of women are suffering, and there are few nobler causes than finding ways to help them. Well, do you agree that campus feminists should come out of their safe spaces and forge alliances with women across the globe struggling for basic rights?

7 Rhetoric in Times of Crisis and Doubt

1.  Abraham Lincoln, “A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand” (June 16, 1858) 1 Lincoln delivered this speech in 1858 when he accepted the nomination for US Senator at the Illinois Republican State Convention in Springfield, Illinois. The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, authored by Senator Stephen Douglas and here criticized by Lincoln, in effect overturned the Missouri Compromise, which had prohibited slavery in the Louisiana Purchase lands north of the 36° 30’, Missouri excepted. This meant in turn that the status of slavery in the nation had become a matter of “popular sovereignty” such that citizens of the states, as distinguished from Congress, were to decide for themselves whether to admit the practice of slavery. As for the recent Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, Lincoln himself lays out its implications: “What Dred Scott’s master might lawfully do with Dred Scott, in the free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other one or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in any other free State.” Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention: If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed – “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to 1

Source: Digital Public Library of America, https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/secession-of-thesouthern-states/sources/770.

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be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new – North as well as South. Have we no tendency to the latter condition? Let anyone who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination – piece of machinery so to speak – compounded of the Nebraska doctrine, and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted; but also, let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design and concert of action, among its chief bosses, from the beginning. The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the states by state Constitutions, and from most of the national territory by congressional prohibition. Four days later, commenced the struggle, which ended in repealing that congressional prohibition. This opened all the national territory to slavery; and was the first point gained. But, so far, Congress only, had acted; and an indorsement by the people, real or apparent, was indispensable, to save the point already gained, and give chance for more. This necessity had not been overlooked; but had been provided for, as well as might be, in the notable argument of “squatter sovereignty,” otherwise called “sacred right of self-government,” which latter phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this: That if any one man, choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object. That argument was incorporated into the Nebraska bill itself, in the language which follows: “It being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom; but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.” Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of “Squatter Sovereignty,” and “Sacred right of self-government.” “But,” said opposition members, “let us be more specific – let us amend the bill so as to expressly declare that the people of the Territory may exclude slavery.” “Not we,” said the friends of the measure; and down they voted the amendment. While the Nebraska bill was passing through Congress, a law case, involving the question of a negro’s freedom, by reason of his owner having voluntarily taken him first into a free State and then a territory covered by the congressional prohibition, and held him as a slave for a long time in each, was passing through the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Missouri; and both Nebraska bill and law suit were brought to a decision in the same month of May, 1854. The negro’s name was “Dred Scott,” which name now designates the decision finally made in the case. Before the then-next Presidential election, the law case came to, and was argued in the Supreme Court of the United States; but the decision of it was deferred until after the election. Still, before the election, Senator Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, requests the leading advocate of the Nebraska bill to state his opinion whether the people of a territory can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits; and the latter answers, “That is a question for the Supreme Court.” The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement, such as it was, secured. That was the second point gained. The indorsement, however, fell short of a clear popular majority by nearly four hundred thousand votes, and so, perhaps,

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was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory. The outgoing President, in his last annual message, as impressively as possible echoed back upon the people the weight and authority of the indorsement. The Supreme Court met again, did not announce their decision, but ordered a re-argument. The Presidential inauguration came, and still no decision of the court; but the incoming President, in his inaugural address, fervently exhorted the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, whatever it might be. Then, in a few days, came the decision. The reputed author of the Nebraska bill finds an early occasion to make a speech at this capitol indorsing the Dred Scott Decision, and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it. The new President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to express his astonishment than any different view had ever been entertained. At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of the Nebraska bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton constitution was or was not, in any just sense, made by the people of Kansas; and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up. I do not understand his declaration that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up, to be intended by him other than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the public mind – the principle for which he declares he has suffered much, and is ready to suffer to the end. And well may he cling to that principle. If he has any parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That principle, is the only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott decision, “squatter sovereignty” squatted out of existence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding – like the mold at the foundry served through one blast and fell back into loose sand – helped to carry an election, and then was kicked to the winds. His late joint struggle with the Republicans, against the Lecompton Constitution, involves nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine. That struggle was made on a point, the right of a people to make their own constitution, upon which he and the Republicans have never differed. The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with Senator Douglas’ “care not” policy, constitute the piece of machinery, in its present state of advancement. The working points of that machinery are: First, that no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant of such slave can ever be a citizen of any State, in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States. This point is made in order to deprive the negro, in every possible event, of the benefit of that provision of the United States Constitution, which declares that – “The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.” Secondly, that “subject to the Constitution of the United States,” neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature can exclude slavery from any United States Territory. This point is made in order that individual men may fill up the territories with slaves, without danger of losing them as property, and thus enhance the chances of permanency to the institution through all the future. Thirdly, that whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a free State, makes him free, as against the holder, the United States courts will not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave State the negro may be forced into by the master. This point is made, not to be pressed immediately; but, if acquiesced in for a while, and apparently indorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion

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that what Dred Scott’s master might lawfully do with Dred Scott, in the free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other one or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in any other free State. Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mold public opinion, at least Northern public opinion, to not care whether slavery is voted down or voted up. This shows exactly where we now are; and partially also, whither we are tending. It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back, and run the mind over the string of historical facts already stated. Several things will now appear less dark and mysterious than they did when they were transpiring. The people were to be left “perfectly free” “subject only to the Constitution.” What the Constitution had to do with it, outsiders could not then see. Plainly enough now, it was an exactly fitted niche for the Dred Scott decision to afterward come in, and declare that perfect freedom of the people, to be just no freedom at all. Why was the amendment, expressly declaring the right of the people to exclude slavery, voted down? Plainly enough now, the adoption of it, would have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision. Why was the court decision held up? Why, even a Senator’s individual opinion withheld, till after the Presidential election? Plainly enough now, the speaking out then would have damaged the “perfectly free” argument upon which the election was to be carried. Why the outgoing President’s felicitation on the indorsement? Why the delay of a re-argument? Why the incoming President’s advance exhortation in favor of the decision? These things look like the cautious patting and petting of a spirited horse, preparatory to mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may give the rider a fall. Any why the hasty after indorsements of the decision by the President and others? We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen, – Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James, for instance – and we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few – not omitting even scaffolding – or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared to yet bring such piece in – in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first lick was struck. It should not be overlooked that, by the Nebraska bill, the people of a State as well as Territory, were to be left “perfectly free” “subject only to the Constitution.” Why mention a State? They were legislating for territories, and not for or about States. Certainly the people of a State are and ought to be subject to the Constitution of the United States; but why is mention of this lugged into this merely territorial law? Why are the people of a territory and the people of a state therein lumped together, and their relation to the Constitution therein treated as being precisely the same? While the opinion of the Court, by Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate opinions of all the concurring Judges, expressly declare that the Constitution of the United States neither permits Congress nor a territorial legislature to exclude slavery from any United States territory, they all omit to declare whether or not the same Constitution permits a state, or the people of a State to exclude it. Possibly, this is a mere omission;

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but who can be quite sure, if McLean or Curtis had sought to get into the opinion a declaration of unlimited power in the people of a state to exclude slavery from their limits, just as Chase and Mace sought to get such declaration, in behalf of the people of a territory, into the Nebraska bill – I ask, who can be quite sure that it would not have been voted down, in the one case, as it had been in the other? The nearest approach to the point of declaring the power of a State over slavery, is made by Judge Nelson. He approaches it more than once, using the precise idea, and almost the language too, of the Nebraska act. On one occasion his exact language is, “except in cases where the power is restrained by the Constitution of the United States, the law of the State is supreme over the subject of slavery within its jurisdiction.” In what cases the power of the states is so restrained by the U.S. Constitution is left an open question, precisely as the same question, as to the restraint on the power of the territories was left open in the Nebraska act. Put that and that together, and we have another nice little niche, which we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision, declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a state to exclude slavery from its limits. And this may be expected if the doctrine of “care not whether slavery be voted down or voted up,” shall gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give promise that such a decision can be maintained when made. Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States. Welcome or unwelcome, such decision is probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power of the present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown. We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State. To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty, is the work now before all those who would prevent that consummation. That is what we have to do. But how can we best do it? There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends, and yet whisper us softly, that Senator Douglas is the aptest instrument there is, with which to effect that object. They do not tell us, nor has he told us, that he wishes any such object to be effected. They wish us to infer all, from the facts, that he now has a little quarrel with the present head of the dynasty; and that he has regularly voted with us, on a single point, upon which, he and we, have never differed. They remind us that he is a great man, and that the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. But “a living dog is better than a dead lion.” Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion for this work, is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he oppose the advance of slavery? He don’t care anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing the “public heart” to care nothing about it. A leading Douglas Democratic newspaper thinks Douglas’ superior talent will be needed to resist the revival of the African slave trade. Does Douglas believe an effort to revive that trade is approaching? He has not said so. Does he really think so? But if it is, how can he resist it? For years he has labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take negro slaves into the new territories. Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred right to buy them where they can be brought cheapest? And, unquestionably they can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia. He has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a mere right of property; and as such, how can he oppose the foreign slave trade – how can he refuse that trade in that “property” shall be “perfectly free” – unless he does it as a protection to the home production? And as the home producers will probably not ask the protection, he will be wholly without a ground of opposition.

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Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser today than he was yesterday – that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. But, can we for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of which he, himself, has given no intimation? Can we safely base our action upon any such vague inference? Now, as ever, I wish to not misrepresent Judge Douglas’ position, question his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle so that our great cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle. But clearly, he is not now with us – he does not pretend to be – he does not promise to ever be. Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by its own undoubted friends – those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work – who do care for the result. Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then to falter now? Now – when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent? This result is not doubtful. We shall not fail – if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate or mistakes delay it, but sooner or later the victory is sure to come.

2.  Theodore Roosevelt, “Citizenship in a Republic,” Address to the Sorbonne (excerpts) (April 23, 1910) 2 Theodore Roosevelt’s (1858–1919) term as President of the United States (1901–09) had just come to an end when he delivered this speech. He did so at the Sorbonne in Paris while traveling to accept the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a treaty between Japan and Russia. Also known as the “Man in the Arena” speech, some of its phrases would reappear in the rhetoric of Richard Nixon, Nelson Mandela, and Barack Obama. Strange and impressive associations rise in the mind of a man from the New World who speaks before this august body in this ancient institution of learning. Before his eyes pass the shadows of mighty kings and war-like nobles, of great masters of law and theology; through the shining dust of the dead centuries he sees crowded figures that tell of the power and learning and splendor of times gone by; and he sees also the innumerable host of humble students to whom clerkship meant emancipation, to whom it was wellnigh the only outlet from the dark thralldom of the Middle Ages. This was the most famous university of medieval Europe at a time when no one dreamed that there was a New World to discover. Its services to the cause of human knowledge already stretched far back into the remote past at the time when my forefathers, three centuries ago, were among the sparse bands of traders, ploughmen, wood-choppers, and fisher folk who, in hard struggle with the iron unfriendliness of 2

Source: Outlook, vol. 83 (January–April 1910).

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the Indian-haunted land, were laying the foundations of what has now become the giant republic of the West. To conquer a continent, to tame the shaggy roughness of wild nature, means grim warfare; and the generations engaged in it cannot keep, still less add to, the stores of garnered wisdom which were once theirs, and which are still in the hands of their brethren who dwell in the old land. To conquer the wilderness means to wrest victory from the same hostile forces with which mankind struggled in the immemorial infancy of our race. The primeval conditions must be met by the primeval qualities which are incompatible with the retention of much that has been painfully acquired by humanity as through the ages it has striven upward toward civilization. In conditions so primitive there can be but a primitive culture. At first only the rudest school can be established, for no others would meet the needs of the hard-driven, sinewy folk who thrust forward the frontier in the teeth of savage men and savage nature; and many years elapse before any of these schools can develop into seats of higher learning and broader culture. The pioneer days pass; the stump-dotted clearings expand into vast stretches of fertile farm land; the stockade clusters of log cabins change into towns; the hunters of game, the fellers of trees, the rude frontier traders and tillers of the soil, the men who wander all their lives long through the wilderness as the heralds and harbingers of an oncoming civilization, themselves vanish before the civilization for which they have prepared the way. The children of their successors and supplanters, and then their children and their children and children’s children, change and develop with extraordinary rapidity. The conditions accentuate vices and virtues, energy and ruthlessness, all the good qualities and all the defects of an intense individualism, self-reliant, self-centered, far more conscious of its rights than of its duties, and blind to its own shortcomings. To the hard materialism of the frontier days succeeds the hard materialism of an industrialism even more intense and absorbing than that of the older nations; although these themselves have likewise already entered on the age of a complex and predominantly industrial civilization. As the country grows, its people, who have won success in so many lines, turn back to try to recover the possessions of the mind and the spirit, which perforce their fathers threw aside in order better to wage the first rough battles for the continent their children inherit. The leaders of thought and of action grope their way forward to a new life, realizing, sometimes dimly, sometimes clear-sightedly, that the life of material gain, whether for a nation or an individual, is of value only as a foundation, only as there is added to it the uplift that comes from devotion to loftier ideals. The new life thus sought can in part be developed afresh from what is roundabout in the New World; but it can be developed in full only by freely drawing upon the treasure-houses of the Old World, upon the treasures stored in the ancient abodes of wisdom and learning, such as this where I speak today. It is a mistake for any nation to merely copy another; but it is an even greater mistake, it is a proof of weakness in any nation, not to be anxious to learn from one another and willing and able to adapt that learning to the new national conditions and make it fruitful and productive therein. It is for us of the New World to sit at the feet of Gamaliel of the Old; then, if we have the right stuff in us, we can show that Paul in his turn can become a teacher as well as a scholar. Today I shall speak to you on the subject of individual citizenship, the one subject of vital importance to you, my hearers, and to me and my countrymen, because you and we are great citizens of great democratic republics. A democratic republic such as ours – an effort to realize in its full sense government by, of, and for the people – ­represents

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the most gigantic of all possible social experiments, the one fraught with great responsibilities alike for good and evil. The success of republics like yours and like ours means the glory, and our failure the despair, of mankind; and for you and for us the question of the quality of the individual citizen is supreme. Under other forms of government, under the rule of one man or very few men, the quality of the leaders is all-important. If, under such governments, the quality of the rulers is high enough, then the nations for generations lead a brilliant career, and add substantially to the sum of world achievement, no matter how low the quality of the average citizen; because the average citizen is an almost negligible quantity in working out the final results of that type of national greatness. But with you and us the case is different. With you here, and with us in my own home, in the long run, success or failure will be conditioned upon the way in which the average man, the average woman, does his or her duty, first in the ordinary, everyday affairs of life, and next in those great occasional cries which call for heroic virtues. The average citizen must be a good citizen if our republics are to succeed. The stream will not permanently rise higher than the main source; and the main source of national power and national greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation. Therefore it behooves us to do our best to see that the standard of the average citizen is kept high; and the average cannot be kept high unless the standard of the leaders is very much higher. It is well if a large proportion of the leaders in any republic, in any democracy, are, as a matter of course, drawn from the classes represented in this audience today; but only provided that those classes possess the gifts of sympathy with plain people and of devotion to great ideals. You and those like you have received special advantages; you have all of you had the opportunity for mental training; many of you have had leisure; most of you have had a chance for enjoyment of life far greater than comes to the majority of your fellows. To you and your kind much has been given, and from you much should be expected. Yet there are certain failings against which it is especially incumbent that both men of trained and cultivated intellect, and men of inherited wealth and position, should especially guard themselves, because to these failings they are especially liable; and if yielded to, their – your – chances of useful service are at an end. Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as a cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twisted pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes second to achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities – all these are marks, not, as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority, but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affectation of contempt for the achievement of others, to hide from others and from themselves their own weakness. The role is easy; there is none easier, save only the role of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance. It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs

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to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride or slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of the great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heart and strength. It is war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors and the valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord who “but for the vile guns would have been a valiant soldier.” France has taught many lessons to other nations: surely one of the most important lessons is the lesson her whole history teaches, that a high artistic and literary development is compatible with notable leadership in arms and statecraft. The brilliant gallantry of the French soldier has for many centuries been proverbial; and during these same centuries at every court in Europe the “freemasons of fashion” have treated the French tongue as their common speech; while every artist and man of letters, and every man of science able to appreciate that marvelous instrument of precision, French prose, has turned toward France for aid and inspiration. How long the leadership in arms and letters has lasted is curiously illustrated by the fact that the earliest masterpiece in a modern tongue is the splendid French epic which tells of Roland’s doom and the vengeance of Charlemagne when the lords of the Frankish hosts were stricken at Roncesvalles. Let those who have, keep, let those who have not, strive to attain, a high standard of cultivation and scholarship. Yet let us remember that these stand second to certain other things. There is need of a sound body, and even more of a sound mind. But above mind and above body stands character – the sum of those qualities which we mean when we speak of a man’s force and courage, of his good faith and sense of honor. I believe in exercise for the body, always provided that we keep in mind that physical development is a means and not an end. I believe, of course, in giving to all the people a good education. But the education must contain much besides book-learning in order to be really good. We must ever remember that no keenness and subtleness of intellect, no polish, no cleverness, in any way make up for the lack of the great solid qualities. Self-restraint, self-mastery, common sense, the power of accepting individual responsibility and yet of acting in conjunction with others, courage and resolution – these are the qualities which mark a masterful people. Without them no people can control itself,

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or save itself from being controlled from the outside. I speak to a brilliant assemblage; I speak in a great university which represents the flower of the highest intellectual development; I pay all homage to intellect, and to elaborate and specialized training of the intellect; and yet I know I shall have the assent of all of you present when I add that more important still are the commonplace, every-day qualities and virtues. Such ordinary, everyday qualities include the will and the power to work, to fight at need, and to have plenty of healthy children. The need that the average man shall work is so obvious as hardly to warrant insistence. There are a few people in every country so born that they can lead lives of leisure. These fill a useful function if they make it evident that leisure does not mean idleness; for some of the most valuable work needed by civilization is essentially non-remunerative in its character, and of course the people who do this work should in large part be drawn from those to whom remuneration is an object of indifference. But the average man must earn his own livelihood. He should be trained to do so, and should be trained to feel that he occupies a contemptible position if he does not do so; that he is not an object of envy if he is idle, at whichever end of the social scale he stands, but an object of contempt, an object of derision. In the next place, the good man should be both a strong and a brave man; that is, he should be able to fight, he should be able to serve his country as a soldier, if the need arises. There are well-meaning philosophers who declaim against the unrighteousness of war. They are right only if they lay all their emphasis upon the unrighteousness. War is a dreadful thing, and unjust war is a crime against humanity. But it is such a crime because it is unjust, not because it is a war. The choice must ever be in favor of righteousness, and this whether the alternative be peace or whether the alternative be war. The question must not be merely, is there to be peace or war? The question must be, is it right to prevail? Are the great laws of righteousness once more to be fulfilled? And the answer from a strong and virile person must be “Yes,” whatever the cost. Every honorable effort should always be made to avoid war, just as every honorable effort should always be made by the individual in private life to keep out of a brawl, to keep out of trouble; but no self-respecting individual, no self-respecting nation, can or ought to submit to wrong. Finally, even more important than ability to work, even more important than ability to fight at need, is it to remember that the chief of blessings for any nation is that it shall leave its seed to inherit the land. It was the crown of blessings in Biblical times, and it is the crown of blessings now. The greatest of all curses is in the curse of sterility, and the severest of all condemnations should be that visited upon willful sterility. The first essential in any civilization is that the man and the woman shall be father and mother of healthy children, so that the race shall increase and not decrease. If this is not so, if through no fault of the society there is failure to increase, it is a great misfortune. If the failure is due to deliberate and willful fault, then it is not merely a misfortune, it is one of those crimes of ease and self-indulgence, of shrinking from pain and effort and risk, which in the long run Nature punishes more heavily than any other. If we of the great republics, if we, the free people who claim to have emancipated ourselves from the thralldom of wrong and error, bring down on our heads the curse that comes upon the willfully barren, then it will be an idle waste of breath to prattle of our achievements, to boast of all that we have done. No refinement of life, no delicacy of taste, no material progress, no sordid heaping up of riches, no sensuous development of art and literature, can in any way compensate for the loss of the great

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fundamental virtues; and of these great fundamental virtues the greatest is the race’s power to perpetuate the race. Character must show itself in the man’s performance both of the duty he owes himself and of the duty he owes the state. The man’s foremost duty is owed to himself and his family; and he can do this duty only by earning money, by providing what is essential to material well-being; it is only after this has been done that he can hope to build a higher superstructure on the solid material foundation; it is only after this has been done that he can help in movements for the general well-being. He must pull his own weight first, and only after this can his surplus strength be of use to the general public. It is not good to excite that bitter laughter which expresses contempt; and contempt is what we feel for the being whose enthusiasm to benefit mankind is such that he is a burden to those nearest him; who wishes to do great things for humanity in the abstract, but who cannot keep his wife in comfort or educate his children. Nevertheless, while laying all stress on this point, while not merely acknowledging but insisting upon the fact that there must be a basis of material well-being for the individual as for the nation, let us with equal emphasis insist that this material well-being represents nothing but the foundation, and the foundation, though indispensable, is worthless unless upon it is raised the superstructure of a higher life. That is why I decline to recognize the mere multimillionaire, the man of mere wealth, as an asset of value to any country; and especially as not an asset to my own country. If he has earned or uses his wealth in a way that makes him a real benefit, of real use – and such is often the case – why, then he does become an asset of real worth. But it is the way in which it has been earned or used, and not the mere fact of wealth, that entitles him to the credit. There is need in business, as in most other forms of human activity, of the great guiding intelligences. Their places cannot be supplied by any number of lesser intelligences. It is a good thing that they should have ample recognition, ample reward. But we must not transfer our admiration to the reward instead of the deed rewarded; and if what should be the reward exists without the service having been rendered, then admiration will only come from those who are mean of soul. The truth is that, after a certain measure of tangible material success or reward has been achieved, the question of increasing it becomes of constantly less importance compared to the other things that can be done in life. It is a bad thing for a nation to raise and to admire a false standard of success; and there can be no falser standard than that set by the deification of material well-being in and for itself. The man who, for any cause for which he is himself accountable, has failed to support himself and those for whom he is responsible, ought to feel that he has fallen lamentably short in his prime duty. But the man, having far surpassed the limits of providing for the wants, both of body and mind, of himself and of those depending upon him, then piles up a great fortune, for the acquisition or retention of which he returns no corresponding benefit to the nation as a whole, should himself be made to feel that, so far from being desirable, he is an unworthy citizen of the community; that he is to be neither admired nor envied; that his right-thinking fellow countrymen put him low in the scale of citizenship, and leave him to be consoled by the admiration of those whose level of purpose is even lower than his own. My position as regards the moneyed interests can be put in a few words. In every civilized society property rights must be carefully safeguarded; ordinarily, and in the great majority of cases, human rights and property rights are fundamentally and in the long run identical; but when it clearly appears that there is a real conflict between them, human rights must have the upper hand, for property belongs to man and not

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man to property. In fact, it is essential to good citizenship clearly to understand that there are certain qualities which we in a democracy are prone to admire in and of themselves, which ought by rights to be judged admirable or the reverse solely from the standpoint of the use made of them. Foremost among these I should include two very distinct gifts – the gift of money-making and the gift of oratory. Money-making, the money touch, I have spoken of above. It is a quality which in a moderate degree is essential. It may be useful when developed to a very great degree, but only if accompanied and controlled by other qualities; and without such control the possessor tends to develop into one of the least attractive types produced by a modern industrial democracy. So it is with the orator. It is highly desirable that a leader of opinion in democracy should be able to state his views clearly and convincingly. But all that the oratory can do of value to the community is enable the man thus to explain himself; if it enables the orator to put false values on things, it merely makes him a power for mischief. Some excellent public servants have not that gift at all, and must merely rely on their deeds to speak for them; and unless oratory does represent genuine conviction based on good common sense and able to be translated into efficient performance, then the better the oratory the greater the damage to the public it deceives. Indeed, it is a sign of marked political weakness in any commonwealth if the people tend to be carried away by mere oratory, if they tend to value words in and for themselves, as divorced from the deeds for which they are supposed to stand. The phrase-maker, the phrase-monger, the ready talker, however great his power, whose speech does not make for courage, sobriety, and right understanding, is simply a noxious element in the body politic, and it speaks ill for the public if he has influence over them. To admire the gift of oratory without regard to the moral quality behind the gift is to do wrong to the republic. Of course all that I say of the orator applies with even greater force to the orator’s latter-day and more influential brother, the journalist. The power of the journalist is great, but he is entitled neither to respect nor admiration because of that power unless it is used aright. He can do, and often does, great good. He can do, and he often does, infinite mischief. All journalists, all writers, for the very reason that they appreciate the vast possibilities of their profession, should bear testimony against those who deeply discredit it. Offenses against taste and morals, which are bad enough in a private citizen, are infinitely worse if made into instruments for debauching the community through a newspaper. Mendacity, slander, sensationalism, inanity, vapid triviality, all are potent factors for the debauchery of the public mind and conscience. The excuse advanced for vicious writing, that the public demands it and that the demand must be supplied, can no more be admitted than if it were advanced by purveyors of food who sell poisonous adulterations. In short, the good citizen in a republic must realize that they ought to possess two sets of qualities, and that neither avails without the other. He must have those qualities which make for efficiency; and he also must have those qualities which direct the efficiency into channels for the public good. He is useless if he is inefficient. There is nothing to be done with that type of citizen of whom all that can be said is that he is harmless. Virtue which is dependent upon a sluggish circulation is not impressive. There is little place in active life for the timid good man. The man who is saved by weakness from robust wickedness is likewise rendered immune from robuster virtues. The good citizen in a republic must first of all be able to hold his own. He is no good citizen unless he has the ability which will make him work hard and which at need

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will make him fight hard. The good citizen is not a good citizen unless he is an efficient citizen. But if a man’s efficiency is not guided and regulated by a moral sense, then the more efficient he is the worse he is, the more dangerous to the body politic. Courage, intellect, all the masterful qualities, serve but to make a man more evil if they are merely used for that man’s own advancement, with brutal indifference to the rights of others. It speaks ill for the community if the community worships those qualities and treats their possessors as heroes regardless of whether the qualities are used rightly or wrongly. It makes no difference as to the precise way in which this sinister efficiency is shown. It makes no difference whether such a man’s force and ability betray themselves in a career of money-maker or politician, soldier or orator, journalist or popular leader. If the man works for evil, then the more successful he is the more he should be despised and condemned by all upright and far-seeing men. To judge a man merely by success is an abhorrent wrong; and if the people at large habitually so judge men, if they grow to condone wickedness because the wicked man triumphs, they show their inability to understand that in the last analysis free institutions rest upon the character of citizenship, and that by such admiration of evil they prove themselves unfit for liberty. The homely virtues of the household, the ordinary workaday virtues which make the woman a good housewife and housemother, which make the man a hard worker, a good husband and father, a good soldier at need, stand at the bottom of character. But of course many others must be added thereto if a state is to be not only free but great. Good citizenship is not good citizenship if only exhibited in the home. There remain the duties of the individual in relation to the State, and these duties are none too easy under the conditions which exist where the effort is made to carry on the free government in a complex industrial civilization. Perhaps the most important thing the ordinary citizen, and, above all, the leader of ordinary citizens, has to remember in political life is that he must not be a sheer doctrinaire. The closet philosopher, the refined and cultured individual who from his library tells how men ought to be governed under ideal conditions, is of no use in actual governmental work; and the onesided fanatic, and still more the mob-leader, and the insincere man who to achieve power promises what by no possibility can be performed, are not merely useless but noxious. […] But we should not take part in acting a lie any more than in telling a lie. We should not say that men are equal when they are not equal, nor proceed upon the assumption that there is an equality where it does not exist; but we should strive to bring about a measurable equality, at least to the extent of preventing the inequality which is due to force or fraud. Abraham Lincoln, a man of the plain people, blood of their blood, and bone of their bone, who all his life toiled and wrought and suffered for them, at the end died for them, who always strove to represent them, who would never tell an untruth to or for them, spoke of the doctrine of equality with his usual mixture of idealism and sound common sense. He said (I omit what was of merely local significance): “I think the authors of the Declaration of Independence intended to include all men, but that they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal—equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the

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obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, or yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all—constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and, even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, everywhere.” We are bound in honor to refuse to listen to those men who would make us desist from the effort to do away with the inequality which means injustice; the inequality of right, of opportunity, of privilege. We are bound in honor to strive to bring even nearer the day when, as far as is humanly possible, we shall be able to realize the ideal that each man shall have an equal opportunity to show the stuff that is in him by the way in which he renders service. There should, so far as possible, be equal of opportunity to render service; but just so long as there is inequality of service there should and must be inequality of reward. We may be sorry for the general, the painter, the artists, the worker in any profession or of any kind, whose misfortune rather than whose fault is that he does his work ill. But the reward must go to the man who does his work well; for any other course is to create a new kind of privilege, the privilege of folly and weakness; and special privilege is injustice, whatever form it takes. To say that the thriftless, the lazy, the vicious, the incapable, ought to have reward given to those who are far-sighted, capable, and upright, is to say what is not true and cannot be true. Let us try to level up, but let us beware of the evil of leveling down. If a man stumbles, it is a good thing to help him to his feet. Every one of us needs a helping hand now and then. But if a man lies down, it is a waste of time to try to carry him; and it is a very bad thing for every one if we make men feel that the same reward will come to those who shirk their work and those who do it. Let us, then, take into account the actual facts of life and not be misled into following any proposal for achieving the millennium, for recreating the golden age, until we have subjected it to hardheaded examination. On the other hand, it is foolish to reject a proposal merely because it is advanced by visionaries. If a given scheme is proposed, look at it on its merits, and, in considering it, disregard formulas. It does not matter in the least who proposes it, or why. If it seems good, try it. If it proves good, accept it; otherwise reject it. There are plenty of good men calling themselves Socialists with whom, up to a certain point, it is quite possible to work. If the next step is one which both we and they wish to take, why of course take it, without any regard to the fact that our views as to the tenth step may differ. But, on the other hand, keep clearly in mind that, though it has been worthwhile to take one step, this does not in the least mean that it may not be highly disadvantageous to take the next. It is just as foolish to refuse all progress because people demanding it desire at some points to go to absurd extremes, as it would be to go to these absurd extremes simply because some of the measures advocated by the extremists were wise. […] In a republic, to be successful we must learn to combine intensity of conviction with a broad tolerance of difference of conviction. Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political, and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not to be stunted, if there is to be room for healthy growth. Bitter internecine hatreds, based on such differences, are signs, not of earnestness of belief, but of that fanaticism which, whether religious or anti-religious, democratic or anti-democratic, is itself but a manifestation of the gloomy bigotry which has been the chief factor in the downfall of so many, many nations.

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Of one man in especial, beyond anyone else, the citizens of a republic should beware, and that is of the man who appeals to them to support him on the ground that he is hostile to other citizens of the republic, that he will secure for those who elect him, in one shape or another, profit at the expense of other citizens of the republic. It makes no difference whether he appeals to class hatred or class interest, to religious or anti-religious prejudice. The man who makes such an appeal should always be presumed to make it for the sake of furthering his own interest. The very last thing an intelligent and self-respecting member of a democratic community should do is to reward any public man because that public man says that he will get the private citizen something to which this private citizen is not entitled, or will gratify some emotion or animosity which this private citizen ought not to possess. Let me illustrate this by one anecdote from my own experience. A number of years ago I was engaged in cattle-ranching on the great plains of the western United States. There were no fences. The cattle wandered free, the ownership of each being determined by the brand; the calves were branded with the brand of the cows they followed. If on a round-up an animal was passed by, the following year it would appear as an unbranded yearling, and was then called a maverick. By the custom of the country these mavericks were branded with the brand of the man on whose range they were found. One day I was riding the range with a newly hired cowboy, and we came upon a maverick. We roped and threw it; then we built a fire, took out a cinch-ring, heated it in the fire; and then the cowboy started to put on the brand. I said to him, “It’s so-and-so’s brand,” naming the man on whose range we happened to be. He answered: “That’s all right, boss; I know my business.” In another moment I said to him: “Hold on, you are putting on my brand!” To which he answered: “That’s all right; I always put on the boss’s brand.” I answered: “Oh, very well. Now you go straight back to the ranch and get whatever is owing to you; I don’t need you any longer.” He jumped up and said: “Why, what’s the matter? I was putting on your brand.” And I answered: “Yes, my friend, and if you will steal for me then you will steal from me.” Now, the same principle which applies in private life applies also in public life. If a public man tried to get your vote by saying that he will do something wrong in your interest, you can be absolutely certain that if ever it becomes worth his while he will do something wrong against your interest. […] And now, my hosts, a word in parting. You and I belong to the only two republics among the great powers of the world. The ancient friendship between France and the United States has been, on the whole, a sincere and disinterested friendship. A calamity to you would be a sorrow to us. But it would be more than that. In the seething turmoil of the history of humanity certain nations stand out as possessing a peculiar power or charm, some special gift of beauty or wisdom or strength, which puts them among the immortals, which makes them rank forever with the leaders of mankind. France is one of these nations. For her to sink would be a loss to all the world. There are certain lessons of brilliance and of generous gallantry that she can teach better than any of her sister nations. When the French peasantry sang of Malbrook, it was to tell how the soul of this warrior-foe took flight upward through the laurels he had won. Nearly seven centuries ago, Froissart, writing of a time of dire disaster, said that the realm of France was never so stricken that there were not left men who would valiantly fight for it. You have had a great past. I believe you will have a great future. Long may you carry yourselves proudly as citizens of a nation which bears a leading part in the teaching and uplifting of mankind.

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3.  Jimmy Carter, “Crisis of Confidence” (also known as the “Malaise” Speech) (July 15, 1979) 3 President Jimmy Carter (1977–81) entered the White House in 1977 at a tumultuous period in American history. The nation was still reeling from President Nixon’s resignation in 1974 and the wounds of the Vietnam war were still fresh. Of more immediate concern were the energy crisis and recession. This speech is regarded by some historians as a defining moment of Carter’s presidency. Good evening. This is a special night for me. Exactly three years ago, on July 15, 1976, I accepted the nomination of my party to run for president of the United States. I promised you a president who is not isolated from the people, who feels your pain, and who shares your dreams and who draws his strength and his wisdom from you. During the past three years I’ve spoken to you on many occasions about national concerns, the energy crisis, reorganizing the government, our nation’s economy, and issues of war and especially peace. But over those years the subjects of the speeches, the talks, and the press conferences have become increasingly narrow, focused more and more on what the isolated world of Washington thinks is important. Gradually, you’ve heard more and more about what the government thinks or what the government should be doing and less and less about our nation’s hopes, our dreams, and our vision of the future. Ten days ago I had planned to speak to you again about a very important subject – energy. For the fifth time I would have described the urgency of the problem and laid out a series of legislative recommendations to the Congress. But as I was preparing to speak, I began to ask myself the same question that I now know has been troubling many of you. Why have we not been able to get together as a nation to resolve our serious energy problem? It’s clear that the true problems of our Nation are much deeper – deeper than gasoline lines or energy shortages, deeper even than inflation or recession. And I realize more than ever that as president I need your help. So I decided to reach out and listen to the voices of America. I invited to Camp David people from almost every segment of our society – business and labor, teachers and preachers, governors, mayors, and private citizens. And then I left Camp David to listen to other Americans, men and women like you. It has been an extraordinary ten days, and I want to share with you what I’ve heard. First of all, I got a lot of personal advice. Let me quote a few of the typical comments that I wrote down. This from a southern governor: “Mr. President, you are not leading this nation – you’re just managing the government.” “You don’t see the people enough anymore.” “Some of your Cabinet members don’t seem loyal. There is not enough discipline among your disciples.” “Don’t talk to us about politics or the mechanics of government, but about an understanding of our common good.”

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Source: Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum, www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/assets/ documents/speeches/energy-crisis.phtml.

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“Mr. President, we’re in trouble. Talk to us about blood and sweat and tears.” “If you lead, Mr. President, we will follow.” Many people talked about themselves and about the condition of our nation. This from a young woman in Pennsylvania: “I feel so far from government. I feel like ordinary people are excluded from political power.” And this from a young Chicano: “Some of us have suffered from recession all our lives.” “Some people have wasted energy, but others haven’t had anything to waste.” And this from a religious leader: “No material shortage can touch the important things like God’s love for us or our love for one another.” And I like this one particularly from a black woman who happens to be the mayor of a small Mississippi town: “The big-shots are not the only ones who are important. Remember, you can’t sell anything on Wall Street unless someone digs it up somewhere else first.” This kind of summarized a lot of other statements: “Mr. President, we are confronted with a moral and a spiritual crisis.” Several of our discussions were on energy, and I have a notebook full of comments and advice. I’ll read just a few. “We can’t go on consuming 40 percent more energy than we produce. When we import oil we are also importing inflation plus unemployment.” “We’ve got to use what we have. The Middle East has only five percent of the world’s energy, but the United States has 24 percent.” And this is one of the most vivid statements: “Our neck is stretched over the fence and OPEC has a knife.” “There will be other cartels and other shortages. American wisdom and courage right now can set a path to follow in the future.” This was a good one: “Be bold, Mr. President. We may make mistakes, but we are ready to experiment.” And this one from a labor leader got to the heart of it: “The real issue is freedom. We must deal with the energy problem on a war footing.” And the last that I’ll read: “When we enter the moral equivalent of war, Mr. President, don’t issue us BB guns.” These ten days confirmed my belief in the decency and the strength and the wisdom of the American people, but it also bore out some of my long-standing concerns about our nation’s underlying problems. I know, of course, being president, that government actions and legislation can be very important. That’s why I’ve worked hard to put my campaign promises into law – and I have to admit, with just mixed success. But after listening to the American people I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can’t fix what’s wrong with America. So, I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy. I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might. The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.

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The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America. The confidence that we have always had as a people is not simply some romantic dream or a proverb in a dusty book that we read just on the Fourth of July. It is the idea which founded our nation and has guided our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else – public institutions and private enterprise, our own families, and the very Constitution of the United States. Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link between generations. We’ve always believed in something called progress. We’ve always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own. Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy. As a people we know our past and we are proud of it. Our progress has been part of the living history of America, even the world. We always believed that we were part of a great movement of humanity itself called democracy, involved in the search for freedom, and that belief has always strengthened us in our purpose. But just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past. In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose. The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world. As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning. These changes did not happen overnight. They’ve come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy. We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate. We remember when the phrase “sound as a dollar” was an expression of absolute dependability, until ten years of inflation began to shrink our dollar and our savings. We believed that our nation’s resources were limitless until 1973, when we had to face a growing dependence on foreign oil. These wounds are still very deep. They have never been healed. Looking for a way out of this crisis, our people have turned to the Federal government and found it isolated from the mainstream of our nation’s life. Washington, D.C., has become an island. The gap between our citizens and our government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual.

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What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends. Often you see paralysis and stagnation and drift. You don’t like it, and neither do I. What can we do? First of all, we must face the truth, and then we can change our course. We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our ability to govern ourselves, and faith in the future of this nation. Restoring that faith and that confidence to America is now the most important task we face. It is a true challenge of this generation of Americans. One of the visitors to Camp David last week put it this way: “We’ve got to stop crying and start sweating, stop talking and start walking, stop cursing and start praying. The strength we need will not come from the White House, but from every house in America.” We know the strength of America. We are strong. We can regain our unity. We can regain our confidence. We are the heirs of generations who survived threats much more powerful and awesome than those that challenge us now. Our fathers and mothers were strong men and women who shaped a new society during the Great Depression, who fought world wars, and who carved out a new charter of peace for the world. We ourselves are the same Americans who just ten years ago put a man on the Moon. We are the generation that dedicated our society to the pursuit of human rights and equality. And we are the generation that will win the war on the energy problem and in that process rebuild the unity and confidence of America. We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I’ve warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure. All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem. Energy will be the immediate test of our ability to unite this nation, and it can also be the standard around which we rally. On the battlefield of energy we can win for our nation a new confidence, and we can seize control again of our common destiny. In little more than two decades we’ve gone from a position of energy independence to one in which almost half the oil we use comes from foreign countries, at prices that are going through the roof. Our excessive dependence on OPEC has already taken a tremendous toll on our economy and our people. This is the direct cause of the long lines which have made millions of you spend aggravating hours waiting for gasoline. It’s a cause of the increased inflation and unemployment that we now face. This intolerable dependence on foreign oil threatens our economic independence and the very security of our nation. The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our nation. These are facts and we simply must face them. What I have to say to you now about energy is simple and vitally important. Point one: I am tonight setting a clear goal for the energy policy of the United States. Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in

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1977 – never. From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation. The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks right now and then reversed as we move through the 1980s, for I am tonight setting the further goal of cutting our dependence on foreign oil by one-half by the end of the next decade – a saving of over 4-1/2 million barrels of imported oil per day. Point two: To ensure that we meet these targets, I will use my presidential authority to set import quotas. I’m announcing tonight that for 1979 and 1980, I will forbid the entry into this country of one drop of foreign oil more than these goals allow. These quotas will ensure a reduction in imports even below the ambitious levels we set at the recent Tokyo summit. Point three: To give us energy security, I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation’s history to develop America’s own alternative sources of fuel – from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the sun. I propose the creation of an energy security corporation to lead this effort to replace 2-1/2 million barrels of imported oil per day by 1990. The corporation I will issue up to $5 billion in energy bonds, and I especially want them to be in small denominations so that average Americans can invest directly in America’s energy security. Just as a similar synthetic rubber corporation helped us win World War II, so will we mobilize American determination and ability to win the energy war. Moreover, I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this nation’s first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000. These efforts will cost money, a lot of money, and that is why Congress must enact the windfall profits tax without delay. It will be money well spent. Unlike the billions of dollars that we ship to foreign countries to pay for foreign oil, these funds will be paid by Americans to Americans. These funds will go to fight, not to increase, inflation and unemployment. Point four: I’m asking Congress to mandate, to require as a matter of law, that our nation’s utility companies cut their massive use of oil by 50 percent within the next decade and switch to other fuels, especially coal, our most abundant energy source. Point five: To make absolutely certain that nothing stands in the way of achieving these goals, I will urge Congress to create an energy mobilization board which, like the War Production Board in World War II, will have the responsibility and authority to cut through the red tape, the delays, and the endless roadblocks to completing key energy projects. We will protect our environment. But when this nation critically needs a refinery or a pipeline, we will build it. Point six: I’m proposing a bold conservation program to involve every state, county, and city and every average American in our energy battle. This effort will permit you to build conservation into your homes and your lives at a cost you can afford. I ask Congress to give me authority for mandatory conservation and for standby gasoline rationing. To further conserve energy, I’m proposing tonight an extra $10 billion over the next decade to strengthen our public transportation systems. And I’m asking you for your good and for your nation’s security to take no unnecessary trips, to use carpools or public transportation whenever you can, to park your car one extra day per week, to obey the speed limit, and to set your thermostats to save fuel. Every act of energy conservation like this is more than just common sense – I tell you it is an act of patriotism.

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Our nation must be fair to the poorest among us, so we will increase aid to needy Americans to cope with rising energy prices. We often think of conservation only in terms of sacrifice. In fact, it is the most painless and immediate way of rebuilding our nation’s strength. Every gallon of oil each one of us saves is a new form of production. It gives us more freedom, more confidence, that much more control over our own lives. So, the solution of our energy crisis can also help us to conquer the crisis of the spirit in our country. It can rekindle our sense of unity, our confidence in the future, and give our nation and all of us individually a new sense of purpose. You know we can do it. We have the natural resources. We have more oil in our shale alone than several Saudi Arabias. We have more coal than any nation on Earth. We have the world’s highest level of technology. We have the most skilled work force, with innovative genius, and I firmly believe that we have the national will to win this war. I do not promise you that this struggle for freedom will be easy. I do not promise a quick way out of our nation’s problems, when the truth is that the only way out is an all-out effort. What I do promise you is that I will lead our fight, and I will enforce fairness in our struggle, and I will ensure honesty. And above all, I will act. We can manage the short-term shortages more effectively and we will, but there are no shortterm solutions to our long-range problems. There is simply no way to avoid sacrifice. Twelve hours from now I will speak again in Kansas City, to expand and to explain further our energy program. Just as the search for solutions to our energy shortages has now led us to a new awareness of our Nation’s deeper problems, so our willingness to work for those solutions in energy can strengthen us to attack those deeper problems. I will continue to travel this country, to hear the people of America. You can help me to develop a national agenda for the 1980s. I will listen and I will act. We will act together. These were the promises I made three years ago, and I intend to keep them. Little by little we can and we must rebuild our confidence. We can spend until we empty our treasuries, and we may summon all the wonders of science. But we can succeed only if we tap our greatest resources – America’s people, America’s values, and America’s confidence. I have seen the strength of America in the inexhaustible resources of our people. In the days to come, let us renew that strength in the struggle for an energy secure nation. In closing, let me say this: I will do my best, but I will not do it alone. Let your voice be heard. Whenever you have a chance, say something good about our country. With God’s help and for the sake of our nation, it is time for us to join hands in America. Let us commit ourselves together to a rebirth of the American spirit. Working together with our common faith we cannot fail. Thank you and good night.

4.  Bill Clinton on Monica Lewinsky (“I did not have…”) (January 26, 1998) 4 In 1998, President Bill Clinton (1993–2001) was accused of having sexual relations with a young White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, and of trying to conceal the fact, even under oath. Clinton would be impeached in the House on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, although the Senate acquitted 4

Source: Miller Center, University of Virginia, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidentialspeeches/january-26-1998-response-lewinsky-allegations.

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him. The phrase “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” from the following televised speech, has been called one of the most unfortunate political one-liners. Thank you very much. First, let me thank all of you who are here. Many of us have been working together now for 20 years on a lot of these issues, and this is a very happy day for us. I thank the First Lady for all she has done on this issue, for as long as I have known her. I thank the Vice President and Mrs. Gore for their family conference and the light it has shed on the announcement we’re here to emphasize today. Thank you, Secretary Riley, for the community learning centers, and I’m very proud of what we’ve done there. Thank you, Bill White. I’ll talk more about your contribution in a moment, but it is truly remarkable. And I thank Rand and Debra Bass for giving us a living, breathing example of the best of America – parents who are working hard to do their jobs, but also determined to do their most important job very well with their children. I thank Senator Feinstein, Senator Dodd, and Senator Boxer for being here. Tomorrow, in the State of the Union Address, I will spell out what we seek to do on behalf of our children to prepare them for the 21st century. But I want to talk a little bit about education today and about this announcement in that context. Education must be our Nation’s highest priority. Last year, in the State of the Union Address, I set out a 10-point plan to move us forward and urged the American people to make sure that politics stops at the schoolhouse door. Well, we’ve made a lot of progress on that 10-point plan: a remarkable – a remarkable – array of initiatives to open the doors of college to every American who’s willing to work for it; strong progress toward high national standards in the basics, the America Reads challenge to teach every 8-year-old to read; continued progress in the Vice President’s program to hook up all of our classrooms and libraries to the Internet by the year 2000. This has been the most important year in a generation for education reform. Tomorrow I’ll set out the next steps on our continuing road. First, I will propose the first-ever national effort to reduce class size in the early grades. Hillary and I worked very hard 15 years ago now to have very strict class sizes at home in the early grades, and it was quite controversial and I think enormously beneficial when we did it. Our balanced budget will help to hire 100,000 teachers who must pass State competency tests but who will be able to reduce class size in the first, second, and third grades to an average of 18 nationwide. Second, since there are more students and there will be more teachers, there must be more classrooms. So I will propose a school construction tax cut to help communities modernize and build new schools. Third, I will promote a national effort to help schools that follow the lead of the Chicago system in ending social promotion but helping students with summer school and other programs to give them the tools they need to get ahead. All these steps will help our children get the future they deserve. And that’s why what we’re announcing here is so important as well. Every child needs someplace to go after school. With after-school programs, we can not only keep our kids healthy and happy and safe, we can help to teach them to say no to drugs, alcohol, and crime, yes to reading, sports, and computers. My balanced

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budget plan includes a national initiative to spark private sector and local community efforts to provide after-school care, as the Secretary of Education said, to half a million more children. Now, let me say, in addition to all the positive benefits, I think it’s important to point out that the hours between 3 and 7 at night are the most vulnerable hours for young people to get in trouble, for juvenile crime. There is this sort of assumption that everybody that gets in trouble when they’re young has just already been abandoned. That’s not true. Most of the kids that get in trouble get in trouble after school closes and before their parents get home from work. So in the adolescent years, in the later years, it is profoundly important to try to give kids something to say yes to and something positive to do. But we can’t do it alone. As I said, our plan involves a public-private partnership. So it has fallen to me to announce that our distinguished guest from the Mott Foundation of Flint, Michigan, has pledged up to $55 million to help ensure that after-school programs supported by Federal funds are of the highest quality. That is an astonishing gift. Thank you, Bill White. Thank you. We are determined to help Americans succeed in the workplace, to raise well-educated, healthy kids, and to help Americans succeed at the toughest job of all, that of being a parent. And the Mott Foundation has gone a long way toward helping us. I thank them. Now, I have to go back to work on my State of the Union speech. And I worked on it until pretty late last night. But I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I’m going to say this again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time – never. These allegations are false. And I need to go back to work for the American people. Thank you.

5.  Donald J. Trump, Inaugural Address (January 20, 2017) 5 Real estate businessman and reality TV producer and host Donald J. Trump (b. 1946) unexpectedly won the Republican nomination and later the presidency, leading a movement rooted in a deep dissatisfaction with the status quo in Washington and “the establishment.” Chief Justice Roberts, President Carter, President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, fellow Americans and people of the world, thank you. We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and restore its promise for all of our people. Together, we will determine the course of America and the world for many, many years to come. We will face challenges, we will confront hardships, but we will get the job done. Every four years, we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power, and we are grateful to President Obama and First Lady Michelle 5

Source: GovInfo, www.govinfo.gov/features/presidential-inaugural-addresses.

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Obama for their gracious aid throughout this transition. They have been magnificent. Thank you. Today’s ceremony, however, has very special meaning because today, we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the people. For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered, but the jobs left and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories. Their triumphs have not been your triumphs. And while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land. That all changes starting right here and right now because this moment is your moment, it belongs to you. It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America. This is your day. This is your celebration. And this, the United States of America, is your country. What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people. January 20th, 2017 will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Everyone is listening to you now. You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement, the likes of which the world has never seen before. At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction, that a nation exists to serve its citizens. Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves. These are just and reasonable demands of righteous people and a righteous public. But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge; and the crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now. We are one nation and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams. And their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny. The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans. For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry; subsidized the armies of other countries, while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military. We’ve defended other nations’ borders while refusing to defend our own. And spent trillions and trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay. We’ve made other countries rich, while the wealth, strength and confidence of our country has dissipated over the horizon. One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores, with not even a thought about the millions and millions of American workers that were left behind. The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed all across the world.

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But that is the past. And now, we are looking only to the future. We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital, and in every hall of power. From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first, America first. Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs will be made to benefit American workers and American families. We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength. I will fight for you with every breath in my body and I will never ever let you down. America will start winning again, winning like never before. We will bring back our jobs. We will bring back our borders. We will bring back our wealth. And we will bring back our dreams. We will build new roads and highways and bridges and airports and tunnels and railways all across our wonderful nation. We will get our people off of welfare and back to work, rebuilding our country with American hands and American labor. We will follow two simple rules; buy American and hire American. We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world, but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first. We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example. We will shine for everyone to follow. We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones and unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate from the face of the Earth. At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other. When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice. The Bible tells us how good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity. We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly, but always pursue solidarity. When America is united, America is totally unstoppable. There should be no fear. We are protected and we will always be protected. We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement. And most importantly, we will be protected by God. Finally, we must think big and dream even bigger. In America, we understand that a nation is only living as long as it is striving. We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action, constantly complaining, but never doing anything about it. The time for empty talk is over. Now arrives the hour of action. Do not allow anyone to tell you that it cannot be done. No challenge can match the heart and fight and spirit of America. We will not fail. Our country will thrive and prosper again. We stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space, to free the earth from the miseries of disease, and to harness the energies, industries and technologies of tomorrow. A new national pride will stir ourselves, lift our sights and heal our divisions. It’s time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget, that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots. We all enjoy the same glorious freedoms and we all salute the same great American flag.

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And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the wind-swept plains of Nebraska, they look up at the same night sky, they fill their heart with the same dreams, and they are infused with the breath of life by the same almighty creator. So to all Americans in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, from ocean to ocean, hear these words: You will never be ignored again. Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way. Together, we will make America strong again. We will make America wealthy again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And yes, together we will make America great again. Thank you. God bless you. And God bless America. Thank you. God bless America.

6.  ALEKSANDR Solzhenitsyn, “A World Split Apart,” Harvard Address (excerpts) (June 8, 1978) 6 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature, and his many writings, including The Gulag Archipelago (1973), exposed the horrors of life in the Soviet Union, its prison system in particular. That this commencement speech was addressed not to excoriating the Soviet tyranny but rather the American way of life, may fairly be said to have been a shock to his immediate audience and beyond. The speech was originally delivered in Russian. I am sincerely happy to be here with you on the occasion of the 327th commencement of this old and illustrious university. My congratulations and best wishes to all of today’s graduates. Harvard’s motto is “Veritas.” Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us as soon as our concentration begins to flag, all the while leaving the illusion that we are continuing to pursue it. This is the source of much discord. Also, truth seldom is sweet; it is almost invariably bitter. A measure of bitter truth is included in my speech today, but I offer it as a friend, not as an adversary. Three years ago in the United States I said certain things that were rejected and appeared unacceptable. Today, however, many people agree with what I then said. The split in today’s world is perceptible even to a hasty glance. Any of our contemporaries readily identifies two world powers, each of them already capable of utterly destroying the other. However, the understanding of the split too often is limited to this political conception: the illusion according to which danger may be abolished through successful diplomatic negotiations or by achieving a balance of armed forces. The truth is that the split is both more profound and more alienating, that the rifts are more numerous than one can see at first glance. These deep manifold splits bear the danger of equally manifold disaster for all of us, in accordance with the ancient truth that a kingdom – in this case, our Earth – divided against itself cannot stand. 6

Source: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Center, www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/a-world-split-apart.

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There is the concept of the Third World: Thus, we already have three worlds. Undoubtedly, however, the number is even greater; we are just too far away to see. Every ancient and deeply rooted self-contained culture, especially if it is spread over a wide part of the earth’s surface, constitutes a self-contained world, full of riddles and surprises to Western thinking. As a minimum, we must include in this category China, India, the Muslim world, and Africa, if indeed we accept the approximation of viewing the latter two as uniform. For one thousand years Russia belonged to such a category, although Western thinking systematically committed the mistake of denying its special character and therefore never understood it, just as today the West does not understand Russia in Communist captivity. And while it may be that in past years Japan has increasingly become, in effect, a Far West, drawing ever closer to Western ways (I am no judge here), Israel, I think, should not be reckoned as part of the West, if only because of the decisive circumstance that its state system is fundamentally linked to religion. How short a time ago, relatively, the small world of modern Europe was easily seizing colonies all over the globe, not only without anticipating any real resistance, but usually with contempt for any possible values in the conquered peoples’ approach to life. It all seemed an overwhelming success, with no geographic limits. Western society expanded in a triumph of human independence and power. And all of a sudden the twentieth century brought the clear realization of this society’s fragility. We now see that the conquests proved to be short-lived and precarious (and this, in turn, points to defects in the Western view of the world which led to these conquests). Relations with the former colonial world now have switched to the opposite extreme and the Western world often exhibits an excess of obsequiousness, but it is difficult yet to estimate the size of the bill which former colonial countries will present to the West and it is difficult to predict whether the surrender not only of its last colonies, but of everything it owns, will be sufficient for the West to clear this account. But the persisting blindness of superiority continues to hold the belief that all the vast regions of our planet should develop and mature to the level of contemporary Western systems, the best in theory and the most attractive in practice; that all those other worlds are but temporarily prevented (by wicked leaders or by severe crises or by their own barbarity and incomprehension) from pursuing Western pluralistic democracy and adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in that direction. But in fact such a conception is a fruit of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, a result of mistakenly measuring them all with a Western yardstick. The real picture of our planet’s development bears little resemblance to all this. The anguish of a divided world gave birth to the theory of convergence between the leading Western countries and the Soviet Union. It is a soothing theory which overlooks the fact that these worlds are not at all evolving toward each other and that neither one can be transformed into the other without violence. Besides, convergence inevitably means acceptance of the other side’s defects, too, and this can hardly suit anyone. If I were today addressing an audience in my country, in my examination of the overall pattern of the world’s rifts I would have concentrated on the calamities of the East. But since my forced exile in the West has now lasted four years and since my audience is a Western one, I think it may be of greater interest to concentrate on certain aspects of the contemporary West, such as I see them. A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a

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whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There remain many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual functionaries exhibit this depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in their self-serving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And the decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood, is ironically emphasized by occasional outbursts of boldness and inflexibility on the part of those same functionaries when dealing with weak governments and with countries that lack support, or with doomed currents which clearly cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists. Must one point out that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end? When the modern Western states were being formed, it was proclaimed as a principle that governments are meant to serve man and that man lives in order to be free and pursue happiness. (See, for example, the American Declaration of Independence.) Now at last during past decades technical and social progress has permitted the realization of such aspirations: the welfare state. Every citizen has been granted the desired freedom and material goods in such quantity and of such quality as to guarantee in theory the achievement of happiness, in the debased sense of the word which has come into being during those same decades. (In the process, however, one psychological detail has been overlooked: The constant desire to have still more things and a still better life and the struggle to this end imprint many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to carefully conceal such feelings. This active and tense competition comes to dominate all human thought and does not in the least open a way to free spiritual development.) The individual’s independence from many types of state pressure has been guaranteed; the majority of the people have been granted well-being to an extent their fathers and grandfathers could not even dream about; it has become possible to raise young people according to these ideals, preparing them for and summoning them toward physical bloom, happiness, the possession of material goods, money, and leisure, toward an almost unlimited freedom in the choice of pleasures. So who should now renounce all this, why and for the sake of what should one risk one’s precious life in defense of the common good and particularly in the nebulous case when the security of one’s nation must be defended in an as yet distant land? Even biology tells us that a high degree of habitual well-being is not advantageous to a living organism. Today, well-being in the life of Western society has begun to take off its pernicious mask. Western society has chosen for itself the organization best suited to its purposes and one I might call legalistic. The limits of human rights and rightness are determined by a system of laws; such limits are very broad. People in the West have acquired considerable skill in using, interpreting, and manipulating law (though laws tend to be too complicated for an average person to understand without the help of an expert). Every conflict is solved according to the letter of the law and this is considered to be the ultimate solution. If one is right from a legal point of view, nothing more is required, nobody may mention that one could still not be entirely right, and urge self-restraint

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or a renunciation of these rights, call for sacrifice and selfless risk: This would simply sound absurd. Voluntary self-restraint is almost unheard of: Everybody strives toward further expansion to the extreme limit of the legal frames. (An oil company is legally blameless when it buys up an invention of a new type of energy in order to prevent its use. A food product manufacturer is legally blameless when he poisons his produce to make it last longer: After all, people are free not to purchase it.) I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is also less than worthy of man. A society based on the letter of the law and never reaching any higher fails to take advantage of the full range of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man’s noblest impulses. And it will be simply impossible to bear up to the trials of this threatening century with nothing but the supports of a legalistic structure. Today’s Western society has revealed the inequality between the freedom for good deeds and the freedom for evil deeds. A statesman who wants to achieve something important and highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; thousands of hasty (and irresponsible) critics cling to him at all times; he is constantly rebuffed by parliament and the press. He has to prove that his every step is well-founded and absolutely flawless. Indeed, an outstanding, truly great person who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind does not get any chance to assert himself; dozens of traps will be set for him from the beginning. Thus mediocrity triumphs under the guise of democratic restraints. It is feasible and easy everywhere to undermine administrative power and it has in fact been drastically weakened in all Western countries. The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations. On the other hand, destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society has turned out to have scarce defense against the abyss of human decadence, for example against the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror. This is all considered to be part of freedom and to be counterbalanced, in theory, by the young people’s right not to look and not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil. And what shall we say about the dark realms of overt criminality? Legal limits (especially in the United States) are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also some misuse of such freedom. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency – all with the support of thousands of defenders in the society. When a government earnestly undertakes to root out terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists’ civil rights. There are quite a number of such cases. This tilt of freedom toward evil has come about gradually, but it evidently stems from a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which man – the master of this world – does not bear any evil within himself, and all the defects of life are caused by misguided social systems, which must therefore be corrected. Yet strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still remains a great deal of crime; there even is considerably more of it than in the destitute and lawless Soviet

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society. […] (There is a multitude of prisoners in our camps who are termed criminals, but most of them never committed any crime; they merely tried to defend themselves against a lawless state by resorting to means outside the legal framework.) The press, too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word “press” to include all the media.) But what use does it make of it? Here again, the overriding concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no true moral responsibility for distortion or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist or a newspaper have to the readership or to history? If they have misled public opinion by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, even if they have contributed to mistakes on a state level, do we know of any case of open regret voiced by the same journalist or the same newspaper? No; this would damage sales. A nation may be the worse for such a mistake, but the journalist always gets away with it. It is most likely that he will start writing the exact opposite to his previous statements with renewed aplomb. Because instant and credible information is required, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors, and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be refuted; they settle into the readers’ memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial, and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, and are then left hanging? The press can act the role of public opinion or miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters pertaining to the nation’s defense publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion into the privacy of well-known people according to the slogan, “Everyone is entitled to know everything.” […] (But this is a false slogan of a false era; far greater in value is the forfeited right of people not to know, not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life has no need for this excessive and burdening flow of information.) Hastiness and superficiality – these are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century and more than anywhere else this is manifested in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press; it is contrary to its nature. The press merely picks out sensational formulas. Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, exceeding that of the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. Yet one would like to ask: According to what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible? In the Communist East, a journalist is frankly appointed as a state official. But who has voted Western journalists into their positions of power, for how long a time, and with what prerogatives? There is yet another surprise for someone coming from the totalitarian East with its rigorously unified press: One discovers a common trend of preferences within the Western press as a whole (the spirit of the time), generally accepted patterns of judgment, and maybe common corporate interests, the sum effect being not competition but unification. Unrestrained freedom exists for the press, but not for the readership, because newspapers mostly transmit in a forceful and emphatic way those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and that general trend. Without any censorship in the West, fashionable trends of thought and ideas are fastidiously separated from those that are not fashionable, and the latter, without ever being forbidden, have little chance of finding their way into periodicals or books or being heard in colleges. Your scholars are free in the legal sense, but they are hemmed in by the idols of the prevailing fad. There is no open violence, as in the East; however,

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a selection dictated by fashion and the need to accommodate mass standards frequently prevents the most independent-minded persons from contributing to public life and gives rise to dangerous herd instincts that block successful development. In America, I have received letters from highly intelligent persons – maybe a teacher in a faraway small college who could do much for the renewal and salvation of his country, but the country cannot hear him because the media will not provide him with a forum. This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, to a blindness which is perilous in our dynamic era. An example is the self-deluding interpretation of the state of affairs in the contemporary world that functions as a sort of a petrified armor around people’s minds, to such a degree that human voices from seventeen countries of Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia cannot pierce it. It will be broken only by the inexorable crowbar of events. I have mentioned a few traits of Western life which surprise and shock a new arrival to this world. The purpose and scope of this speech will not allow me to continue such a survey, in particular to look into the impact of these characteristics on important aspects of a nation’s life, such as elementary education, advanced education in the humanities, and art. It is almost universally recognized that the West shows all the world the way to successful economic development, even though in past years it has been sharply offset by chaotic inflation. However, many people living in the West are dissatisfied with their own society. They despise it or accuse it of no longer being up to the level of maturity attained by mankind. And this causes many to sway toward socialism, which is a false and dangerous current. I hope that no one present will suspect me of expressing my partial criticism of the Western system in order to suggest socialism as an alternative. No; with the experience of a country where socialism has been realized, I shall certainly not speak for such an alternative. The mathematician Igor Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliantly argued book entitled Socialism; this is a penetrating historical analysis demonstrating that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death. Shafarevich’s book was published in France almost two years ago and so far no one has been found to refute it. It will shortly be published in English in the US. […] But should I be asked, instead, whether I would propose the West, such as it is today, as a model to my country, I would frankly have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through deep suffering, people in our country have now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Even those characteristics of your life which I have just enumerated are extremely saddening. A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human personality in the West while in the East it has become firmer and stronger. Six decades for our people and three decades for the people of Eastern Europe; during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. The complex and deadly crush of life has produced stronger, deeper, and more interesting personalities than those generated by standardized Western well-being. Therefore, if our society were to be transformed into yours, it would mean an improvement in certain aspects, but also a change for the worse on some particularly significant points. Of course, a society cannot remain in an abyss of lawlessness, as is the case in our country. But it is also demeaning for it to stay on such a soulless and smooth plane of legalism, as is the case

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in yours. After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today’s mass living habits, introduced as by a calling card by the revolting invasion of commercial advertising, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music. All this is visible to numerous observers from all the worlds of our planet. The Western way of life is less and less likely to become the leading model. There are telltale symptoms by which history gives warning to a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, a decline of the arts or a lack of great statesmen. Indeed, sometimes the warnings are quite explicit and concrete. The center of your democracy and of your culture is left without electric power for a few hours only, and all of a sudden crowds of American citizens start looting and creating havoc. The smooth surface film must be very thin, then, the social system quite unstable and unhealthy. But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive. You can feel their pressure, yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about? Very well-known representatives of your society, such as George Kennan, say: “We cannot apply moral criteria to politics.” Thus we mix good and evil, right and wrong, and make space for the absolute triumph of absolute evil in the world. Only moral criteria can help the West against communism’s well-planned world strategy. There are no other criteria. Practical or occasional considerations of any kind will inevitably be swept away by strategy. After a certain level of the problem has been reached, legalistic thinking induces paralysis; it prevents one from seeing the scale and the meaning of events. In spite of the abundance of information, or maybe partly because of it, the West has great difficulty in finding its bearings amid contemporary events. There have been naïve predictions by some American experts who believed that Angola would become the Soviet Union’s Vietnam or that the impudent Cuban expeditions in Africa would best be stopped by special US courtesy to Cuba. Kennan’s advice to his own country – to begin unilateral disarmament – belongs to the same category. If you only knew how the youngest of the officials in Moscow’s Old Square7 roar with laughter at your political wizards! As to Fidel Castro, he openly scorns the United States, boldly sending his troops to distant adventures from his country right next to yours. However, the most cruel mistake occurred with the failure to understand the Vietnam war. Some people sincerely wanted all wars to stop just as soon as possible; others believed that the way should be left open for national, or Communist, self-determination in Vietnam (or in Cambodia, as we see today with particular clarity). But in fact, members of the US antiwar movement became accomplices in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in the genocide and the suffering today imposed on thirty million people there. Do these convinced pacifists now hear the moans coming from there? Do they understand their responsibility today? Or do they prefer not to hear? The American intelligentsia lost its nerve and as a consequence the danger has come much closer to

7

The Old Square in Moscow (Staraya ploshchad) is the place where the headquarters of the Central Committee of the CPSU are located; it is the real name of what in the West is conventionally referred to as “the Kremlin.” [Footnote in original text.]

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the United States. But there is no awareness of this. Your short-sighted politician who signed the hasty Vietnam capitulation seemingly gave America a carefree breathing pause; however, a hundredfold Vietnam now looms over you. Small Vietnam had been a warning and an occasion to mobilize the nation’s courage. But if the full might of America suffered a full-fledged defeat at the hands of a small Communist half-country, how can the West hope to stand firm in the future? I have said on another occasion that in the twentieth century Western democracy has not won any major war by itself; each time it shielded itself with an ally possessing a powerful land army, whose philosophy it did not question. In World War II against Hitler, instead of winning the conflict with its own forces, which would certainly have been sufficient, Western democracy raised up another enemy, one that would prove worse and more powerful, since Hitler had neither the resources nor the people, nor the ideas with broad appeal, nor such a large number of supporters in the West – a fifth column – as the Soviet Union possessed. Some Western voices already have spoken of the need of a protective screen against hostile forces in the next world conflict; in this case, the shield would be China. But I would not wish such an outcome to any country in the world. First of all, it is again a doomed alliance with evil; it would grant the United States a respite, but when at a later date China with its billion people would turn around armed with American weapons, America itself would fall victim to a Cambodia-style genocide. And yet, no weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower. In a state of psychological weakness, weapons even become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, in this case, but concessions, attempts to gain time, and betrayal. Thus at the shameful Belgrade conference, free Western diplomats in their weakness surrendered the line of defense for which enslaved members of the Helsinki Watch Groups are sacrificing their lives. Western thinking has become conservative: The world situation must stay as it is at any cost; there must be no changes. This debilitating dream of a status quo is the symptom of a society that has ceased to develop. But one must be blind in order not to see that the oceans no longer belong to the West, while the land under its domination keeps shrinking. The two so-called world wars (they were by far not on a world scale, not yet) constituted the internal self-destruction of the small progressive West which has thus prepared its own end. The next war (which does not have to be an atomic one; I do not believe it will be) may well bury Western civilization forever. In the face of such a danger, with such historical values in your past, with such a high level of attained freedom and, apparently, of devotion to it, how is it possible to lose to such an extent the will to defend oneself? How has this unfavorable relation of forces come about? How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present debility? Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing steadily in accordance with its proclaimed social intentions, hand in hand with a dazzling progress in technology. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of weakness. This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very foundation of thought in modern times. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was born in the Renaissance and has found political expression since the Age of Enlightenment. It became the basis for political and social doctrine and could be called rationalistic

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humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and practiced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of all. The turn introduced by the Renaissance was probably inevitable historically: The Middle Ages had come to a natural end by exhaustion, having become an intolerable despotic repression of man’s physical nature in favor of the spiritual one. But then we recoiled from the spirit and embraced all that is material, excessively and incommensurately. The humanistic way of thinking, which had proclaimed itself our guide, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man, nor did it see any task higher than the attainment of happiness on earth. It started modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend of worshiping man and his material needs. Everything beyond physical well-being and the accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtler and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any higher meaning. Thus gaps were left open for evil, and its drafts blow freely today. Mere freedom per se does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and even adds a number of new ones. And yet in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted on the ground that man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding one thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual be granted boundless freedom with no purpose, simply for the satisfaction of his whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming ever more materialistic. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even to excess, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistic selfishness of the Western approach to the world has reached its peak and the world has found itself in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the celebrated technological achievements of progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the twentieth century’s moral poverty, which no one could have imagined even as late as the nineteenth century. As humanism in its development was becoming more and more materialistic, it also increasingly allowed its concepts to be used first by socialism and then by communism. So that Karl Marx was able to say, in 1844, that “communism is naturalized humanism.” This statement has proved to be not entirely unreasonable. One does see the same stones in the foundations of an eroded humanism and of any type of socialism: boundless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility (which under Communist regimes attains the stage of anti-religious dictatorship); concentration on social structures with an allegedly scientific approach. (This last is typical of both the Age of Enlightenment and of Marxism.) It is no accident that all of communism’s rhetorical vows revolve around Man (with a capital M) and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today’s West and today’s East? But such is the logic of materialistic development. The interrelationship is such, moreover, that the current of materialism which is farthest to the left, and is hence the most consistent, always proves to be stronger, more attractive, and victorious. Humanism which has lost its Christian heritage cannot prevail

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in this competition. Thus during the past centuries and especially in recent decades, as the process became more acute, the alignment of forces was as follows: Liberalism was inevitably pushed aside by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism, and socialism could not stand up to communism. The Communist regime in the East could endure and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who (feeling the kinship!) refused to see communism’s crimes, and when they no longer could do so, they tried to justify these crimes. The problem persists: In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. And yet Western intellectuals still look at it with considerable interest and empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East. I am not examining the case of a disaster brought on by a world war and the changes which it would produce in society. But as long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we must lead an everyday life. Yet there is a disaster which is already very much with us. I am referring to the calamity of an autonomous, irreligious humanistic consciousness. It has made man the measure of all things on earth – imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now paying for the mistakes which were not properly appraised at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. It is trampled by the party mob in the East, by the commercial one in the West. This is the essence of the crisis: The split in the world is less terrifying than the similarity of the disease afflicting its main sections. If, as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on earth evidently must be more spiritual: not a total engrossment in everyday life, not the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then their carefree consumption. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become above all an experience of moral growth: to leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to reappraise the scale of the usual human values; its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the president’s performance should be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or to the availability of gasoline. Only by the voluntary nurturing in ourselves of freely accepted and serene self-restraint can mankind rise above the world stream of materialism. Today it would be retrogressive to hold on to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Such social dogmatism leaves us helpless before the trials of our times. Even if we are spared destruction by war, life will have to change in order not to perish on its own. We cannot avoid reassessing the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man’s life and society’s activities should be ruled by material expansion above all? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our integral spiritual life? If the world has not approached its end, it has reached a major watershed in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will demand from us a spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a

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new level of life, where our physical nature will not be cursed, as in the Middle Ages, but even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon, as in the Modern Era. This ascension is similar to climbing onto the next anthropological stage. No one on earth has any other way left but – upward.

7.  Allan Bloom, “Western Civ.,” Address to Harvard University (December 7, 1988) 8 Allan Bloom (1930–92) was an American professor of political philosophy, best known for his criticism of American higher education in The Closing of the American Mind (1987), a surprise best-seller. Bloom gave the following address to a packed auditorium at Harvard University. Fellow elitists: If I were E. D. Hirsch – people do tend to mix us up – I might ask, “What is the literary influence on my salutation?’’ The answer is Franklin D. Roosevelt’s salutation to another select audience, the Daughters of the American Revolution. He began his address, “Fellow Immigrants.” Roosevelt was gently ridiculing those ladies for believing that in America old stock constitutes any title whatsoever to privilege. That notion is a relic of the aristocratic past which this democracy supplanted in favor of equality or of privilege based on merit. Roosevelt was urbane and witty, this century’s greatest virtuoso of democratic leadership. We, the immigrants or the children of immigrants, loved his act; he was on our side. Our enjoyment of his joke was enhanced by the acid of vengeance against those who thought they were better than us. F.D.R. knew how to manipulate such sentiments, and his slap at the D.A.R. was not entirely disinterested insofar as there were a lot more of us than there were of them. Moreover Roosevelt’s enjoyment was quite different from ours. He was really one of them. His family’s claims to antiquity, wealth, and distinction were as good as practically anyone’s. It was certainly more pleasant to poke fun at his equals or inferiors than to show resentment toward his superiors. His was an aristocratic condescension. He condescended to rule in a democracy, to be, as was often said about him at the time, “a traitor to his class” – a neat mixture of man’s perpetual striving to be first and the demands of a society where all are held to be equal. The psychology of democracy is complex and fascinating. That psychology determined the very unusual intensity of the response to The Closing of the American Mind, focusing on my alleged elitism. I was suspect as an enemy of our democratic regime. And the first and loudest voices in this chorus came from the Ivy League, particularly from those with some connection to Harvard – to the point where I thought of the old joke about the farmer who hears a thief in the chicken coop. Substituting the Harvard Coop, I imagined myself yelling, “Who’s in there?” and getting the answer, “There’s nobody in here but us anti-elitists.” Everybody knows that Harvard is in every respect – its students, its faculty, its library, and its endowment – the best university in the world. Long ago when I, a Middle-Westerner, taught for a year at Yale, 8

Source: Giants and Dwarfs: Essays 1960–1990 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 13–31. Used by permission of the estate of Allan Bloom. All rights reserved.

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I was amazed at the little Harvard worm that was eating away at the souls of practically all the professors and students there, except for the ones who had turned down the opportunity to be at Harvard. Elite is not a word I care for very much – imprecise and smacking of sociological abstraction – but if any American institution of any kind merits that name, it is Harvard, and it lends that tincture to everyone associated with it. Why, then, this passion to accuse others of the crime of elitism? One is tempted to attribute it to simple self-protectiveness. “If we say he is one, they won’t notice us.” But I suspect some, or many, acted from a more tortuous, more ambiguous motive: guilt. The leading principle of our regime is the equal worth of all persons, and facts or sentiments that appear to contradict that principle are experienced by a democrat as immoral. Bad conscience accompanies the democrat who finds himself part of an elite. He tries to suppress or deny to himself whatever covert feelings he might experience – I am sure that none of you has had them – of delight or superiority in the fact that he has been distinguished by Harvard, of how much better off he or she is than the poor jerks at Kalamazoo College, even that he or she deserves it, that superior gifts merit superior education, position, and esteem. A few might consciously believe such things, but since they would be at odds with the egalitarian opinions of democracy, they tend to become spiritual outlaws, hypocrites, and cynically indifferent to the only American principle of justice. The rest, to soothe their consciences, have to engage in casuistry, not to say sophistry. The simple democratic answer would be open admissions, just as there would be if Harvard were located in Europe, where such elitism is less tolerated. But nobody here really considers that. Harvard, I gather, intends to remain adamantly exclusive, implying thereby that there are significant natural differences among human beings. President Bok’s way of squaring such elitism with democratic right-thinking is, apparently, to teach that the Harvard person is a doer of good works for society as a whole. This is in the spirit of Harvard’s John Rawls, who permits people to possess and cultivate superior talents if they can be proved to benefit the most disadvantaged part of society. Whether this solution is reason or rationalization is open to discussion. All this suggests the intricate psychology of the democrat, which we must be aware of in order to know ourselves and which we are not likely to be aware of without the help of significant thinkers like Tocqueville, Burke, and Plato, who see us from the outside and judge us in terms of serious alternatives to democracy. The charge of elitism reflects the moral temper of our regime, as the charge of atheism would have done in an earlier age. You couldn’t get much of a response in a university today by saying that Allan Bloom doesn’t believe in God. But you can get a lot of people worked up by saying that I don’t believe in equality. And this tells us a lot about our times, and explains how tempting a career is offered to egalitarian Tartufferie. “Elitist” is not a very precise charge; but compared with the Ivy League, I would have at worst to be called a moderate elitist, and by persons other than those who are now making the charge. The real disagreement concerns the content of today’s and tomorrow’s elite education. We are now witnessing the introduction of a new “non-elitist,” “non-exclusionary” curriculum in the humanities and in parts of the social sciences, and with it a program for reforming the human understanding. This is an extremely radical project whose supporters pass it off as mainstream by marching under the colors of all the movements toward a more equal society which almost all Americans endorse. Not recognized for what it is, this radicalism can thus marshal powerful and sometimes angry passions alongside its own fanatic ones. The Closing of the American Mind was brought before this inquisition and condemned to banishment from the land of the learned. The American

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Council of Learned Societies even issued a report written by a panel of the new men and women which declared that there is now a scholarly consensus, nay, a proof, that all classic texts must be studied using a single approved method. Such texts are, we are ordered to believe, expressions of the unconscious class, gender, or race prejudices of their authors. The calling of the humanities in our day is to liberate us from the sway of those authors and their prejudices; Shakespeare and Milton, among others, are mentioned in the report. This puts humanists at the cutting edge of the battle against Eurocentrism. The battle is not primarily, or even at all, scholarly but moral and political, and members of the reactionary rear guard are the objects of special fury, the enemies of historic destiny. What kind of a man could stand in the way of deconstructionism, which according to Hillis Miller, one of its proponents, will bring the millennium of peace and justice to all mankind? Consequently the report deplored the “disturbing” success of The Closing of the American Mind and attributed it to that old bogey, “American anti-intellectualism” (of the Know-Nothing or McCarthyite variety, you see). The characters who wrote this report were sent by central casting for the movie version of The Closing of the American Mind. Such responses were inevitable, since I am very much a critic of the radical reform being imposed on us, although I have always been a supporter and a beneficiary of the movements toward practical equality. For my sins I have reaped an unabating whirlwind of abuse, paralleled in my experience only by Sartre’s diatribes against his enemies and critics in Les Temps Modernes in the forties and fifties. (As I argued in my book, that Sartrean world was the conveyer belt for many of the views affecting us now.) I suspect that Sartre is the model for engagé critics who charged that my opinions stain my hands with the blood of innocents in Nicaragua, les mains sales [dirty hands], and called me, in a striking reminder of our McCarthyite heritage, “un-American.” People’s angers teach much about what concerns them. Anger almost always disguises itself as moral indignation and, as Aristotle teaches, is the only one of the passions that requires speech and reason – to provide arguments which justify it and without which it is frustrated and withers. Anger proves man’s rationality while it obscures and endangers reason. The arguments it adduces always lead back to a general principle of morality and then issue in blame – they would also lead to book-burning if the angry were not strongly constrained by our liberal society. Here is an example as reported by Richard Bernstein in The New York Times (September 25, 1988): A “MINUTE OF HATRED” IN CHAPEL HILL: ACADEMIA’S LIBERALS DEFEND CARNIVAL OF CANONS AGAINST BLOOM’S “KILLER B’S” In some respects, the scenes in North Carolina last weekend recalled the daily “minute of hatred” in George Orwell’s 1984, when citizens are required to rise and hurl invective at pictures of a man known only as Goldstein, the Great Enemy of the state. At a conference on the future of liberal education sponsored by Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, speaker after speaker denounced what they called “the cultural conservatives” who, in the words of a Duke English professor, Stanley Fish, have mounted “dyspeptic attacks on the humanities.” There were no pictures of these “cultural conservatives” on the wall, but they were derided, scorned, laughed at ….

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I appreciate the Times’ making explicit the resemblance to Stalinist thought control. Such sentiments represent the current establishment in the humanities, literature, and history. These professors are from hot institutions like Stanford and Duke which have most openly dedicated themselves to the new educational dawn called openness, a dawn whose rosy fingers are currently wrapped tightly around the throat of the curriculum in most universities. The attack on The Closing of the American Mind brings this movement into focus, though it has misrepresented both the book and me. There is a desire to make me into something other than what I am so that I can be more easily categorized and demolished. In the first place I am not a conservative – neo- or paleo-. I say this not to curry favor in a setting where conservatism is out of favor. Conservatism is a respectable outlook, and its adherents usually have to have some firmness of character to stick by what is so unpopular in universities. I just do not happen to be that animal. Any superficial reading of my book will show that I differ from both theoretical and practical conservative positions. My teachers – Socrates, Machiavelli, Rousseau, and Nietzsche – could hardly be called conservatives. All foundings are radical, and conservatism always has to be judged by the radical thought or events it intends to conserve. At first I was not, to use Marxist language, even considered an objective ally of the Right – as the very favorable opinions of the book expressed by Left liberals such as Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, Richard Reeves, Robert Skidelsky, and Conor Cruise O’Brien prove. But that was before the elite intellectuals weighed in. Their misunderstanding has something to do with the fact that I am also not in any current sense a liberal, although the preservation of liberal society is of central concern to me. The permanent human tendency is to doubt that the theoretical stance is authentic and suspect that it is only a covert attachment to a party. And this tendency is much strengthened in our time when philosophy is itself understood to be engagé, the most extreme partisanship. The necessity of parties in politics has been extrapolated to the point where it now seems that the mind itself must be dominated by the spirit of party. From this perspective, theory looks pallid, weak, dishonest, and sinister. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., criticized me in a way which shows how naive the views of contemporary intellectuals have become. He said, with a somewhat unsure grasp of what I wrote, that I am an absolutist whereas the authentic American tradition is relativist. To support this latter contention he cited – hold on to your seats – the Declaration of Independence’s “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights….” He takes this statement of fundamental principle, mirabile dictu, to be evidence of the American Founders’ relativism. Schlesinger made this astounding argument in a commencement address at Brown University, where he apparently thinks the students will believe anything. It is a waste of time to defend myself when the charges allege that I said things I did not say, but it is perhaps useful to instruct Professor Schlesinger about the real question. I never stated, nor do I believe, that man is, or can be, in possession of absolutes. My language is not that of absolutes, a language not present in my writings. I tried to teach, evidently not very successfully in his case, that there are two threats to reason, the opinion that one knows the truth about the most important things and the opinion that there is no truth about them. Both of these opinions are fatal to philosophy; the first asserts that the quest for the truth is unnecessary, while the second asserts that it is impossible. The Socratic knowledge of ignorance, which I take to be the beginning point of all philosophy, defines the sensible middle ground between two extremes, the

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proofs of which demand much more than we know. Pascal’s formula about our knowing too little to be dogmatists and too much to be skeptics perfectly describes our human condition as we really experience it, although men have powerful temptations to obscure it and often find it intolerable. Socrates’ way of life is the consequence of his recognition that we can know what it is that we do not know about the most important things and that we are by nature obliged to seek that knowledge. We must remain faithful to the bit of light which pierces through our circumambient darkness. It is the theoretical life I admire, not some moralism or other, and I seek to defend it against the assaults peculiar to our time. Philosophy, the enemy of illusions and false hopes, is never really popular and is always suspect in the eyes of the supporters of whichever of the extremes happens to dominate. Mr. Schlesinger is an average representative of the relativism which is today’s consensus on the Left. However, so eminent and perceptive an observer as Walker Percy, looking from the Right, says that he suspects that I am a nihilist, and he is supported in that view by much less responsible persons from the same quarter. I would respond to him with exactly the same arguments I made to Arthur Schlesinger. This equilibrium of criticism reassures me that I am in the right way, and it confirms my apprehensions about philosophy. It is neither understood nor desired. To the ones it is absolutism, to the others it is relativism; there is no middle; each camp shoves it over into the other. I am now even more persuaded of the urgent need to study why Socrates was accused. The dislike of philosophy is perennial, and the seeds of the condemnation of Socrates are present at all times, not in the bosoms of pleasure seekers, who don’t give a damn, but in those of high-minded and idealistic persons who do not want to submit their aspirations to examination. Certainly Socrates is the source of a profound liberalism in relation to which Professor Schlesinger’s version of it looks like a parody. I conclude this digression by remarking that Professor Schlesinger’s relativism is not real relativism but a curious mixture of absolutism and relativism typical of our time. Professor Schlesinger is absolutely and unquestioningly committed to democracy and wants to avoid people quibbling about it. He coyly says he does not believe in anything and that good and evil are just preferences, and then he entrusts democracy’s fate to a hidden or, rather, a divine hand. I, for my part, doubt that there is any substitute for rational argument for all of its risks and uncertainties. Professor Schlesinger, no stranger to the fabrication of myths or ideologies, appears to be providing one for the tyranny of the majority. Further, I am also not the leader or member of an educational reform movement, or any movement whatsoever. I respect persons like Sidney Hook who give the best of their energies to fighting threats to academic integrity. But that is not me. I have always been content to hang around the fringes of the intellectual establishment and look in, and am continually surprised that I can support myself that way. To attempt to change things would take me away from my natural activity, would delay gratification now for the sake of unsure futures. I suppose I think the most important thing is to think things through. My book is a statement – as serious as I could make it – about the contemporary situation seen from the perspective of our quest for self-knowledge. Not in my wildest imagination did I think it would appeal to anyone but a few friends and potential friends, a few students and potential students. When it became a hit, the genial American can-do traits surfaced. The prospect I described is publicly unendurable, and I was both criticized for not providing a cure and praised for having prescribed one. Perhaps a public debate about education is a good thing. But I am not a very active participant in it. I suspect

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that any confrontation with currently stronger forces only precipitates greater defeats for liberal education. Above all, I wish to avoid the self-absorption and corrosion I have seen in others who were principals in causes célèbres. I have gotten a great kick out of becoming the academic equivalent of a rock star. This is partly because the eternal American child in me found it agreeable to experience peculiarly American success from the inside – to find out whether I had been missing anything. But mostly it was because I was afforded a close-up look at the closing of the American mind. I have had to learn, however, to watch out as it slams shut on me. To the extent I am passionately affected by the spectacle I describe in the book, I feel sorrow or pity for young people whose horizon has become so dark and narrow that, in this enlightened country, it has begun to resemble a cave. Self-consciousness, self-awareness, the Delphic “know thyself” seems to me to be the serious business of education. It is, I know, very difficult even to know what that means, let alone achieve it. But one thing is certain. If one’s head is crammed with ideas that were once serious but have become clichés, if one does not even know that these clichés are not as natural as the sun and moon, and if one has no notion that there are alternatives to them, one is doomed to be the puppet of other people’s ideas. Only the search back to the origins of one’s ideas in order to see the real arguments for them, before people became so certain of them that they ceased thinking about them at all, can liberate us. Our study of history has taught us to laugh at the follies of the whole past, the monarchies, oligarchies, theocracies, and aristocracies with their fanaticism for empire or salvation, once taken so seriously. But we have very few tools for seeing ourselves in the same way, as others will see us. Each age always conspires to make its own way of thinking appear to be the only possible or just way, and our age has the least resistance to the triumph of its own way. There is less real presence of respectable alternatives and less knowledge of the titanic intellectual figures who founded our way. Moreover we are also affected by historicism, which tells us one cannot resist one’s way, and relativism, which asks, “What’s the use, anyway?” All this has the effect of crippling the natural longing to get out. In The Closing of the American Mind I criticized doctrinaire historicism and relativism as threats to the self-awareness of those who honestly seek it. I pointed to the great sources of those serious ideas which have become dogmas and urged that we turn to serious study of them in order to purge ourselves of our dogmatism. For this I have been violently attacked as nostalgic, ideological, doctrinaire. The meaning is really “Don’t touch our belief structure; it hurts.” We ought to know, on the basis of historical observation, that what epochs consider their greatest virtue is most often really their greatest temptation, vice, or danger – Roman manliness, Spanish piety, British class, German authenticity. We have to learn to put the scalpel to our virtues. Plato suggests that if you’re born in a democracy you are likely to be a relativist. It goes with the territory. Relativism may be true, but, since you are by birthright inclined to it, you especially had better think it over – not for the sake of good morals or good social order, at least in any usual sense of those terms, but for the sake of your freedom and your self-awareness. Since I first addressed the issue of relativism, I have learned with what moral fervor it is protected and its opposite, ethnocentrism, attacked. This fervor does not propose an investigation but a crusade. The very idea that we ought to look for standards by which to judge ourselves is scandalous. You simply have to believe in the current understanding of openness if you are to believe in democracy and be a decent person. This openness dogma was epitomized by one intellectual who, unencumbered by acquaintance with my book, ridiculed me for not simply accepting that all cultures are

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equal. He said that his opinion must be standard equipment for all those who expect to cope with “the century of the Pacific” which is upon us. His formulation set my imagination in motion. I decided it might be interesting to experience a Gulliver’s travel to Japan to see whether we really want to set our bark on the great Pacific with a relativist compass and without an “ethnocentric” life jacket. We can weigh anchor at the new, new Stanford, whose slogan is now “Join Stanford and see the world.” When we arrive in Japan we shall see a thriving nation. Its success clearly has something to do with its society, which asks much of itself and gets it. It is a real community; its members have roots. Japanese society is often compared to a family. These characteristics are in tune with much of current liberal thought in America. (Remember Governor Cuomo’s keynote speech to the Democratic Convention in 1984.) But the family is exclusive. For in it there is an iron wall separating insiders from outsiders, and its members feel contrary sentiments toward the two. So it is in Japanese society, which is intransigently homogeneous, barring the diversity which is the great pride of the United States today. To put it brutally, the Japanese seem to be racists. They consider themselves superior; they firmly resist immigration; they exclude even Koreans who have lived for generations among them. They have difficulty restraining cabinet officers from explaining that America’s failing economy is due to blacks. Should we open ourselves up to this new culture? Sympathize with its tastes? Should we aim for restrictiveness rather than diversity? Should we experiment with a more effective racism? All these things could be understood as part of our interest in keeping up with the Japanese economic miracle. Or they could, in a tonier vein, help us in our search for community and roots. We recoil in horror at even having such thoughts. But how can we legitimate our horror? It is only the result of our acculturation, excess baggage brought with us on such voyages of discovery. If there are no transcultural values, our reaction is ethnocentric. And the one thing we know absolutely is that ethnocentrism is bad. So we have painted ourselves into a corner. And it is important to understand this. Those who shrug off such difficulties fail to recognize how important it is to have justice in addition to feeling on our side. Without justice we shall soon succumb to some dangerous temptations and have perhaps already begun to do so. Many such lessons are to be learned on future voyages to the non-Western world. Discovery requires courage and resoluteness, as Heidegger will teach you. I wonder whether all the engagé critics who use his language are aware of what he means when he says that one has to face storms in the ocean of becoming. When little children speak of how bad ethnocentrism is, I know that they have been propagandized. It is too complicated a thing for them to understand. Condemning ethnocentrism is frequently a sign of intellectual, although not necessarily moral, progress. But it is only a first step. To recognize that some of the things our culture believes are not true imposes on us the duty of finding out which are true and which are not, a business altogether more difficult than the wholesale jettisoning of all that one thought one knew. Such jettisoning always ends up with the selective and thoughtless return to old ethnocentric ideas on the basis of what one needs right now, of what pleases one, of pure feeling.9 But to travel one must spend a little time thinking about one’s compass as well as the land one wishes to reach.

9

Following this lecture, Henry Rosovsky, the legendary dean of Harvard College, exasperated by me, announced that he is a relativist. In the next instant he was complaining that I only look for the bad things in Japan and not the good ones.

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This problem has been nicely illustrated these last months by the case of Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, which insulted the Muslim faith and occasioned the Ayatollah Khomeini’s command to have Rushdie killed in England, or wherever he is to be found. There was general shock throughout the Western world at this, and writers, whose ox was being gored, rushed before the TV cameras to denounce this blatant attack on the inviolable principle of freedom of speech. All well and good. But the kicker is that most of these very same writers have for many years been teaching that we must respect the integrity of other cultures and that it is arrogant ethnocentrism to judge other cultures according to our standards, which are themselves merely products of our culture. In this case, however, all such reasonings were forgotten, and freedom of speech was treated as though its claims to transcultural status, its claims to be valid everywhere and always, are true. A few days earlier such claims were treated as instruments of American imperialism; miraculously they were transformed into absolutes. Leaving aside the intellectual incoherence here, this floating means to say we do not know from moment to moment what we will do when there are conflicts, which there inevitably will be, between human rights and the imperatives of the culturally sacred. You may have noticed that there has recently been silence about the case; this is partially because it is an embarrassment, and our convictions are weak. The serious arguments that established the right of freedom of speech were made by philosophers – most notably Locke, Milton, and Mill – and our contemporaries do not return to them to refresh their memories and to see whether the arguments are really good. And this is due not only to laziness but also to the current attack on the very idea of such study. The educational project of reforming the mind in the name of openness has gained strength in the last couple of years and is succeeding in changing curricula all over the country. These changes are as great as any of the sixties but not nearly so noticeable because so easily accepted and now apparently so obviously right. From the slogans and the arguments echoed so frequently in the universities and the press one can judge the intentions of the reform and what is at stake. The key word is canon. What we are witnessing is the Quarrel of the Canons, the twentieth century’s farcical version of the seventeenth century’s Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns – the greatest document of which is Swift’s Battle of the Books. Would that he were here to describe ours as he described theirs! The issue is what food best nourishes the hungers of young souls. “The canon” is the newly valued, demagogically intended, expression for the books taught and read by students at the core of their formal education. But as soon as one adopts the term, as both sides have – foolishly so for those who defend Dante, Shakespeare, and Kant – the nature of the debate has thereby been determined. For canon means what is established by authority, by the powers, hence not by criteria that are rationally defensible. The debate shifts from the content of books to how they become powerful, the motives for which they are used. Canons are, by definition, instruments of domination. They are there to be overthrown, deconstructed, in the name of liberation. Those who seek empowerment must overcome the prevailing canon, the main source of their enslavement. Curiously books are invested with a very great significance in all this. They are the causes, not mere epiphenomena, as Marxism would have it. Change the books, not the ownership of the means of production, and you change the world: “Readers of the world, you have nothing to lose but your canon.” The language is the language of power. “Philosophy is the most spiritualized will to power.” That is from Nietzsche, as is, more or less, all the current talk about the canon. “It’s all about power,” as they say, and in a more metaphysical sense than most

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know. Philosophy in the past was about knowing; now it is about power. This is the source of the deep drama being played out so frivolously about us. Intellectual life is the struggle of wills to power. Edward Said said at Stanford that the new university reforms were the triumph of postmodernism, meaning, among other things, that the curriculum which taught that the theoretical life is highest has been overcome. Underlying the discussion about non-Western content is a discussion among Westerners using entirely Western categories about the decline or end of the West. The suicide of the West is, by definition, accomplished by Western hands. The Times report of the North Carolina conference gives the flavor of the public discussion: “… the conference’s participants denounced what they said was a narrow, outdated interpretation of the humanities and of culture itself, one based, they frequently pointed out, on works written by ‘dead white European males.’” That is the slogan. Above all, the campaign is against Eurocentrism: “The message of the North Carolina conference was that American society has changed too much for this view to prevail any longer. Blacks, women, Latinos and homosexuals are demanding recognition for their own canons. ‘Projects like those of Bennett, Hirsch and Bloom all look back to the recovery of the earlier vision of American culture, as opposed to the conception of a kind of ethnic carnival or festival of cultures or ways of life or customs,’ Professor Fish said.” Replace the old, cold Greek temple with an oriental bazaar. This might be called the Chicago politics model. Overthrow the Waspocracy by means of a Rainbow Coalition. This has more or less plausibility as a political “strategy.” Whether it should be the polar star in the formation of young minds is another question. It promises continuing wondrous curricular variations as different specialties and groups vie for power. I would need the pen of Flaubert to characterize it fully. I am grateful to Professor Fish for having described it so candidly.10 This is the popular surface of the movement, the publicly acceptable principle of everyone’s getting a piece of the action in a nation that has bought into group politics. But there is a deeper, stronger, and more revealing side: “The conference buzzed with code words. When the speakers talked about ‘the hegemonic culture,’ they meant undemocratic domination by white men. The scholars particularly scorned the idea that certain great works of literature have absolute value or represent some eternal truth. Just about everything, they argued, is an expression of race, class or gender.” This is academic jargon, one-third Marxist, two-thirds Nietzschean; but it points toward the metaphysics of the cosmic power struggle in terms of which we interpret everything nowadays. All books have to be reinterpreted to find the conscious or unconscious 10

During the question period I discovered that this project has been a roaring success with at least some students. A Chinese, a black, and Armenian, and a person speaking for homosexuals wondered whether they were being “excluded,” inasmuch as books by members of their “communities” are not represented in curricula in proportion to their numbers in the population. They seemed to think that Greeks and Italians have been in control of universities and that now their day is coming. One can imagine a census which would redistribute the representation of books. The premise of these students’ concerns is that “where you come from,” your culture, is more important than where you are going. They are rather like Plato’s noble guardian dogs in the Republic who love what is familiar, no matter how bad it is, and hate all that is strange or foreign. This kind of demand is entirely new: you do not go to college to discover for yourself what is good but to be confirmed in your origins.

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power motive of their authors. As Nietzsche puts it, “Every philosophy is the author’s secret confession.” The other side in this struggle can be found in the words of W. E. B. Du Bois at the turn of the century: “I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn or condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil.”11 I confess that this view is most congenial to me. Du Bois found our common transcultural humanity not in a canon, but in certain works from which he learned about himself and gained strength for his lonely journey, beyond the Veil. He found community rather than war. He used the books to think about his situation, moving beyond the corrosive of prejudice to the independent and sublime dignity of the fully developed soul. He recapitulates the ever-renewed experience of books by intelligent poor and oppressed people seeking for a way out. But during the recent Stanford curriculum debate, a leader of the black student group declared that the implicit message of the Western civilization curriculum is “nigger go home.” Du Bois from this perspective was suffering from false consciousness, a deceptive faith in theoretical liberation offered by the inventors of practical slavery. No Exit. These opposing quotes truly reflect the meaning of the debate over what is called the canon. The word has religious overtones. The Canon is the list of books of the Bible accepted by the Catholic Christian church as genuine and inspired. These books are supposed to compel our faith without reason or evidence. Using a word like canon arouses our passion for liberation from authority. This kind of pseudo-religious characterization of practically everything is epidemic in the post-Nietzschean period. God is dead, and he is the only founder. All kinds of abstract words, like charisma, determine our perspective on phenomena before we look at them, and harden the opinion that power is the only thing, in the intellectual arena as well as in the political arena. A canon is regarded as the means of indoctrination used by a ruling elite, and study is the process of entitlement for entry into the elite, for distinguishing the dominators from the dominated. In other words, the priests who teach the canon are empowered by the canon, and they protect their privileged position by their teaching. They establish the canon and are established by it. So you see why a professor like me defends the canon so ferociously. One can go on weaving these webs of fantasy endlessly, and there is an element of truth in them. Obviously books are used by nations and religions to support their way and to train the young to it. But that is not the whole story. Many books, perhaps the most important ones, have an independent status and bring us light from outside our cave, without which we would be blind. They are frequently the acid which reveals the outlines of abusive power. This is especially true in a liberal society like our own, where it is hard to find a “canonical” book which truly supports our way unqualifiedly. It is at least as plausible that the books which have a continuing good reputation and used to be read in colleges have made it on their intrinsic merits. To be sure, traditions tend

11

W.E. Burghardt Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: New American Library, 1969), 139.

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to ossify and also to aggregate superfluous matters, to be taught authoritatively by tiresome persons who don’t know why they are important and who hold their jobs because they are virtuosos of trivia. But this only means that the traditions have to be renewed from time to time and the professors made to give an account of themselves. One of the most obvious cases of a writer used as an authority to bolster what might be called a structure of power is Aristotle during the Christian Middle Ages. Scholasticism was a stifling force which had to be rebelled against in order to free the mind. But to take that Will Durant-like interpretation as exhaustive would be naive. In the first place, Aristotle is something on his own. He survived the wreckage of Scholasticism quite nicely and needed no power structure prior to that time or afterward to insure the continuing interest enlightened men and women take in his works. Moreover, Aristotle’s accession to power was a result of a revolution in Christianity which rationalized it and made it move a long way from revelation toward reason. It was the explosion of Greek philosophy into Christian Europe. That philosophy had been preserved and renewed among the Muslims. The challenge of reason presented by the Muslim philosophers precipitated a crisis in Christianity that was appeased but not entirely resolved by Thomas Aquinas. Aristotle sat among the Christian sages, but he inspired many to turn against them. Here we have a truly interesting case of the relation between the allegedly Western and the allegedly non-Western. Such cases speak against the canonical thesis rather than for it and are covered over by it. It is a grave error to accept that the books of the dead white Western male canon are essentially Western – or any of those other things. The fact that I am doubtful about the non-Western craze suggests automatically, even to sympathetic critics, that I am promoting Western Civ or the like. Yet the very language used shows how enslaved we have become to the historicist assertion that all thought is decisively culture-bound. When Averroes and Thomas Aquinas read Aristotle they did not think of him as Greek and put him into his historical context. They had no interest in Greek Civ but treated him as a wise man, hence a contemporary at all times. We smile at this naiveté, but they understood Aristotle better than do our scholars, as one can see simply by perusing the commentaries. Plato and Kant claim that they speak to all men everywhere and forever, and I see no reason to reject those claims a priori. But that is precisely what is done when they are taken to be parts of Western Civ. To the extent they are merely that, the appeals against them are justified, for Western Civ is clearly partial, demanding the supplement of all the other Civs. The strength of these appeals is in their demand for wholeness or completeness of understanding. Therefore, to begin with, historicism, the alleged primacy of culture, has to be called into question, though it is one of those opinions that has so completely captured modern minds that it appears indubitable. The quarrel is not about Western and non-Western but about the possibility of philosophy. The real issue is being obscured due to a political dispute. If we give in we shall allow very modern philosophy to swallow up all philosophers from Socrates up to and including Marx. Postmodernism is an attempt to annihilate the inspiration of Greek philosophy that is more effective than that of the barbarians with their Dark Ages after the fall of Rome, more effective because it is being accomplished by the force and the guile of philosophy itself. I am not asserting the truth of philosophy’s old claim to break through the limits of culture and history, but I am asserting that it is the only question. It is neither a Western nor a non-Western question. Nobody, or practically nobody, argues that natural science is essentially Western. Some efforts have been made in that direction, just as some feminists have tried to show

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that science is essentially male, but these efforts, aside from their admirable sense of the need for theoretical consistency, have not proved persuasive. There is that big rock of transcultural knowledge or truth, natural science, standing amidst us while we chatter on about the cultural basis of all knowledge. A serious non-Western putsch would require that students learn fifty percent non-Western math, fifty percent non-Western physics, fifty percent non-Western biology, and so forth for medicine and engineering. The reformers stop there because they know they would smack up against a brick wall and discredit their whole movement. Philosophy, they say, is not like that. Perhaps, but I have yet to see a serious discussion about wherein it differs. Differ it does today. But qualitatively? That question ought to keep us busy for a long time. Science is surely somehow transcultural. Religion seems pretty much limited to cultures, even to define them. Is philosophy like science, or is it like religion? What we are witnessing is an attempt to drag it away definitively to the camp of religion. The universities have dealt with this problem by ceding the despised historicized humanities to the political activists and extremists, leaving undisturbed their non-historicized disciplines, which is where the meat and the money are. It is a windfall for administrators to be able to turn all the affirmative-action complaints over to the humanities, which act as a lightning rod while their ship continues its stately progress over undisturbed waters. Stanford shows its concerned, humane, radical face to its inner community, and its serious technical face to the outside community, particularly to its donors. The humanities radicals will settle for this on the calculation that if they can control the minds of the young, they will ultimately gain political control over the power of science. The essential liberating texts have survived because they are useful. When I spoke of democracy and relativism in The Closing of the American Mind, I said only what I learned from Plato and a few others. I appreciate and need further information. So do we all. The serious scholars in non-Western thought should bring us the powerful texts they know of to help us. The true canon aggregates around the most urgent questions we face. That is the only ground for the study of books. Idle cultural reports, Eastern or Western, cannot truly concern us, except as a hobby. Edgar Z. Friedenberg once said that social scientists are always giving themselves hernias trying to see something about America Tocqueville did not see. That is why we need Tocqueville, and our neglecting to read him can be interpreted as an effort at hernia prevention. Nietzsche did not seek out Socrates because he was part of the classical canon German boys learned in school. He did so in spite of that fact. Socrates was necessary to him as the profoundest statement of what philosophy is and as the worthiest of rivals. Machiavelli was impelled by real need, not by conformism, when he sought out Xenophon. Male, female, black, white, Greek, barbarian: that was all indifferent, as it should be. Nietzsche reflected on Buddha when he wanted to test the principle of contradiction. That is a model of the way things should be. The last thing we need is a sort of philosophic U.N. run by bureaucrats for the sake of representation for all peoples. Each must ultimately judge for himself about the important books, but a good beginning would be to see what other thinkers the thinkers who attract him turn to. That will quickly lead to the top. There are very few who remain there, and they recognize one another. There is no conspiracy, only the desire to know. If we allow ourselves to be seduced by the plausible theses of our day, and turn our backs on the great dialogue, our loss will be irreparable. In my book I connected this radical historicism with fascism and asserted that the thinking of the European Right had wandered over to the Left in America. This earned

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me severe and unthinking criticism (with the honorable exception of Richard Rorty). It seems to such critics that I am one of those persons who trivialize unique and terrible phenomena by calling anyone whom I don’t like a fascist or a Nazi. But I did not call persons active in the sixties those names, I said that the language of the New Left was no longer truly Marxist and had become imbued with the language of fascism. And anyone with an ear for the speech of intellectuals in Weimar Germany will hear echoes all around us of the dangerous ideas to which they became accustomed. Since the publication of The Closing of the American Mind, fortuitously there has been fresh attention paid to the Nazism of Martin Heidegger, more and more widely recognized as the most intelligent figure contributing to the postmodernist movement. At the same time Paul de Man, who introduced deconstructionism into the United States, was revealed to have written, as a young man, pro-Nazi articles for a collaborationist Belgian newspaper. In reading these articles I was struck by the fact that if one suppresses the references to Hitler and Hitlerism, much of it sounds like what one reads in advanced literary reviews today. The lively debate around these questions has not been very helpful, for it focuses more on questions of personal guilt than on the possible relation of their thought to the foulest political extremism. The fact that de Man had become a Leftist doesn’t prove a thing. He never seems to have passed through a stage where he was attracted by reason or liberal democracy. Those who chose culture over civilization, the real opposition, which we have forgotten, were forced to a position beyond good and evil, for good and evil are products of cultures. The really great thinkers who thought through what the turn to culture means, starting from power, said that immoderation, violence, blood, and soil are its means. These are the consequence of the will to power. I am inclined to take the views of men of such stature seriously. Very few of America’s end-of-theWest people are attracted by these aspects of the problem of culture, although there are some, I suspect, who do experience a terrible frisson of joy when they hear them. However that may be, one always ends up by paying a price for the consequences of what one thinks. This is how the American intellectual scene looks. Much greater events occurring outside the United States, however, demonstrate the urgency of our task. Those events are epitomized by the Statue of Liberty erected by the Chinese students in Tiananmen Square. Apparently, after some discussion about whether it should be altered to have Chinese rather than Eurocentric features, there was a consensus that it did not make any difference. The terror in China continues, and we cannot yet know what will become of those courageous young persons. But we do know the justice of their cause; and although there is no assurance that it will ultimately triumph, their oppressors have won the universal execration of mankind. With Marxist ideology a wretched shambles everywhere, nobody believes any longer in communist legitimacy. Everywhere in the communist world what is wanted is rational liberal democracy that recognizes men’s natural freedom and equality and the rights dependent on them. The people of that world need and want education in democracy and the institutions that actualize it. That education is one of the greatest services the democracies can offer to the people who live under communist tyrannies and long for liberty. The example of the United States is what has impressed them most, and their rulers have been unable to stem the infection. Our example, though, requires explanations, the kind the Founders gave to the world. And this is where we are failing: the dominant schools in American universities can tell the Chinese students only that they should avoid Eurocentrism, that rationalism has failed,

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that they should study non-Western cultures, and that bourgeois liberalism is the most despicable of regimes. Stanford has replaced John Locke, the philosopher of liberalism, with Frantz Fanon, an ephemeral writer once promoted by Sartre because of his murderous hatred of Europeans and his espousal of terrorism. However, this is not what the Chinese need. They have Deng Xiao Ping to deconstruct their Statue of Liberty. We owe them something much better. It is in this atmosphere, the awareness that we tread near the edge of the abyss, that I think and write. The American intellectual scene is bleak and ominous but certainly provides great theoretical exhilaration, if one can bear to observe it closely.

8 War and Conflict

1.  Shakespeare, “St. Crispin’s Day Speech,” 1 henry v 4.3.18–67 In 1415 Henry V, the King of England, invaded France in pursuit of his hereditary claim to the throne of France. After capturing the city of Harfleur, he started on an arduous march toward Calais. On October 25, he and his army, much weakened by disease and fatigue, faced near the town of Agincourt a French army that outnumbered them five to one. This dire circumstance led the Earl of Westmorland to express a wish that they had ten thousand more men. This comment elicited from Henry a response, known as the St. Crispin’s Day speech, which Shakespeare raises to rhetorical heights in Henry V. The English won the battle, inflicting great losses on the French while suffering few casualties of their own. king 1 2

henry:  What’s he that wishes so? My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin: If we are mark’d to die, we are enough To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honour. God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more. By Jove, I am not covetous for gold, Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;2 It yearns me not if men my garments wear; Such outward things dwell not in my desires: But if it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive.

Source: Open Source Shakespeare, www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view .php?WorkID=henry5&Act=4&Scene=3&Scope=scene. That is, “eats at my expense.”

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No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England: God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour As one man more, methinks, would share from me For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more! Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host, That he which hath no stomach to this fight, Let him depart; his passport shall be made And crowns for convoy put into his purse: We would not die in that man’s company That fears his fellowship to die with us. This day is called the feast of Crispian: He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named, And rouse him at the name of Crispian. He that shall live this day, and see old age, Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’ Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars. And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’ Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot, But he’ll remember with advantages What feats he did that day: then shall our names, Familiar in his mouth as household words Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester, Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d. This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remember’d; We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition:3 And gentlemen in England now a-bed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

2.  Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural (March 4, 1865) 4 President Lincoln insisted on holding the 1864 presidential election even though the nation was in the middle of a civil war whose outcome hung in 3 4

That is, “ennoble his status.” Source: Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/resource/lprbscsm.scsm0283.

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the balance. The speech, considered one of the best in American history, was attended by more than 30,000 people, including a disgruntled stage actor, John Wilkes Booth, who would assassinate the president 44 days later. Fellow Countrymen, At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it – all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war – seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came. One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope – fervently do we pray – that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.”

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With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

3.  Franklin D. Roosevelt, “For a Declaration of War Against Japan” (December 8, 1941) 5 Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945), whose tenure as President lasted from 1933 until 1945, here asks Congress to declare war against Japan, a day after the Japanese attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. With the exception of one Congresswoman, Jeannette Rankin of Montana, the Declaration was approved unanimously and signed by the President the same day. Mr. Vice President, and Mr. Speaker, and Members of the Senate and House of Representatives: Yesterday, December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. The United States was at peace with that Nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its Government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American Island of Oahu, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack. It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace. The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu. Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya. Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night the Japanese attacked Wake Island. And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island. Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our Nation. 5

Source: Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/resource/afc1986022.afc1986022_ms2201/?st=text.

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As Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense. But always will our whole Nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us. Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces – with the unbounding determination of our people – we will gain the inevitable triumph – so help us God. I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

4.  Franklin D. Roosevelt, “State of the Union Address to Congress” (January 6, 1941) 6 President Franklin Roosevelt gave the “Four Freedoms Speech,” as it has come to be called, at a time when England and the US were the only major free nations not under the control of Nazi Germany. With France having succumbed to Nazi domination the previous summer, England had already taken the brunt of Hitler’s strikes during the Battle of Britain from July to October and was in desperate need of US assistance to hold off what appeared to be an imminent German invasion. But since many Americans opposed the US involvement in yet another European war, it was up to President Roosevelt to remind his people of what was at stake, which, he argued, was freedom itself. President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Seventy-seventh Congress: I address you, the Members of this new Congress, at a moment unprecedented in the history of the Union. I use the word “unprecedented,” because at no previous time has American security been as seriously threatened from without as it is today. Since the permanent formation of our Government under the Constitution, in 1789, most of the periods of crisis in our history have related to our domestic affairs. And fortunately, only one of these – the four-year War Between the States – ever threatened our national unity. Today, thank God, one hundred and thirty million Americans, in forty-eight States, have forgotten points of the compass in our national unity. It is true that prior to 1914 the United States often had been disturbed by events in other Continents. We had even engaged in two wars with European nations and in a number of undeclared wars in the West Indies, in the Mediterranean and in the Pacific for the maintenance of American rights and for the principles of peaceful commerce. 6

Source: National Archives, www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-franklin-rooseveltsannual-message-to-congress.

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But in no case had a serious threat been raised against our national safety or our continued independence. What I seek to convey is the historic truth that the United States as a nation has at all times maintained clear, definite opposition, to any attempt to lock us in behind an ancient Chinese wall while the procession of civilization went past. Today, thinking of our children and of their children, we oppose enforced isolation for ourselves or for any other part of the Americas. That determination of ours, extending over all these years, was proved, for example, in the early days during the quarter century of wars following the French Revolution. While the Napoleonic struggles did threaten interests of the United States because of the French foothold in the West Indies and in Louisiana, and while we engaged in the War of 1812 to vindicate our right to peaceful trade, it is nevertheless clear that neither France nor Great Britain, nor any other nation, was aiming at domination of the whole world. And in like fashion from 1815 to 1914 – ninety-nine years – no single war in Europe or in Asia constituted a real threat against our future or against the future of any other American nation. Except in the Maximilian interlude in Mexico, no foreign power sought to establish itself in this Hemisphere; and the strength of the British fleet in the Atlantic has been a friendly strength. It is still a friendly strength. Even when the World War broke out in 1914, it seemed to contain only small threat of danger to our own American future. But, as time went on, as we remember, the American people began to visualize what the downfall of democratic nations might mean to our own democracy. We need not overemphasize imperfections in the Peace of Versailles. We need not harp on failure of the democracies to deal with problems of world reconstruction. We should remember that the Peace of 1919 was far less unjust than the kind of “pacification” which began even before Munich, and which is being carried on under the new order of tyranny that seeks to spread over every continent today. The American people have unalterably set their faces against that tyranny. I suppose that every realist knows that the democratic way of life is at this moment being directly assailed in every part of the world – assailed either by arms, or by secret spreading of poisonous propaganda by those who seek to destroy unity and promote discord in nations that are still at peace. During sixteen long months this assault has blotted out the whole pattern of democratic life in an appalling number of independent nations, great and small. And the assailants are still on the march, threatening other nations, great and small. Therefore, as your President, performing my constitutional duty to “give to the Congress information of the state of the Union,” I find it, unhappily, necessary to report that the future and the safety of our country and of our democracy are overwhelmingly involved in events far beyond our borders. Armed defense of democratic existence is now being gallantly waged in four continents. If that defense fails, all the population and all the resources of Europe, and Asia, and Africa and Australasia will be dominated by conquerors. And let us remember that the total of those populations in those four continents, the total of those populations and their resources greatly exceeds the sum total of the population and the resources of the whole of the Western Hemisphere – yes, many times over.

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In times like these it is immature – and incidentally, untrue – for anybody to brag that an unprepared America, single-handed, and with one hand tied behind its back, can hold off the whole world. No realistic American can expect from a dictator’s peace international generosity, or return of true independence, or world disarmament, or freedom of expression, or freedom of religion – or even good business. Such a peace would bring no security for us or for our neighbors. “Those, who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” As a nation, we may take pride in the fact that we are softhearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed. We must always be wary of those who with sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal preach the “ism” of appeasement. We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their own nests. I have recently pointed out how quickly the tempo of modern warfare could bring into our very midst the physical attack which we must eventually expect if the dictator nations win this war. There is much loose talk of our immunity from immediate and direct invasion from across the seas. Obviously, as long as the British Navy retains its power, no such danger exists. Even if there were no British Navy, it is not probable that any enemy would be stupid enough to attack us by landing troops in the United States from across thousands of miles of ocean, until it had acquired strategic bases from which to operate. But we learn much from the lessons of the past years in Europe – particularly the lesson of Norway, whose essential seaports were captured by treachery and surprise built up over a series of years. The first phase of the invasion of this Hemisphere would not be the landing of regular troops. The necessary strategic points would be occupied by secret agents and by their dupes – and great numbers of them are already here, and in Latin America. As long as the aggressor nations maintain the offensive, they – not we – will choose the time and the place and the method of their attack. And that is why the future of all the American Republics is today in serious danger. That is why this Annual Message to the Congress is unique in our history. That is why every member of the Executive Branch of the Government and every member of the Congress face great responsibility and great accountability. The need of the moment is that our actions and our policy should be devoted primarily – almost exclusively – to meeting this foreign peril. For all our domestic problems are now a part of the great emergency. Just as our national policy in internal affairs has been based upon a decent respect for the rights and the dignity of all of our fellow men within our gates, so our national policy in foreign affairs has been based on a decent respect for the rights and the dignity of all nations, large and small. And the justice of morality must and will win in the end. Our national policy is this: First, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to all-inclusive national defense. Second, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to full support of all those resolute people everywhere who are resisting aggression and are thereby keeping war away from our Hemisphere.

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By this support, we express our determination that the democratic cause shall prevail; and we strengthen the defense and the security of our own nation. Third, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to the proposition that principles of morality and considerations for our own security will never permit us to acquiesce in a peace dictated by aggressors and sponsored by appeasers. We know that enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people’s freedom. In the recent national election there was no substantial difference between the two great parties in respect to that national policy. No issue was fought out on this line before the American electorate. And today it is abundantly evident that American citizens everywhere are demanding and supporting speedy and complete action in recognition of obvious danger. Therefore, the immediate need is a swift and driving increase in our armament ­production. Leaders of industry and labor have responded to our summons. Goals of speed have been set. In some cases these goals are being reached ahead of time; in some cases we are on schedule; in other cases there are slight but not serious delays; and in some cases – and I am sorry to say very important cases – we are all concerned by the slowness of the accomplishment of our plans. The Army and Navy, however, have made substantial progress during the past year. Actual experience is improving and speeding up our methods of production with every passing day. And today’s best is not good enough for tomorrow. I am not satisfied with the progress thus far made. The men in charge of the program represent the best in training, in ability, and in patriotism. They are not satisfied with the progress thus far made. None of us will be satisfied until the job is done. No matter whether the original goal was set too high or too low, our objective is quicker and better results. We are behind schedule in turning out finished airplanes; we are working day and night to solve the innumerable problems and to catch up. We are ahead of schedule in building warships but we are working to get even further ahead of that schedule. To change a whole nation from a basis of peacetime production of implements of peace to a basis of wartime production of implements of war is no small task. And the greatest difficulty comes at the beginning of the program, when new tools, new plant facilities, new assembly lines, and new ship ways must first be constructed before the actual materiel begins to flow steadily and speedily from them. The Congress, of course, must rightly keep itself informed at all times of the progress of the program. However, there is certain information, as the Congress itself will readily recognize, which, in the interests of our own security and those of the nations that we are supporting, must of needs be kept in confidence. New circumstances are constantly begetting new needs for our safety. I shall ask this Congress for greatly increased new appropriations and authorizations to carry on what we have begun. I also ask this Congress for authority and for funds sufficient to manufacture additional munitions and war supplies of many kinds, to be turned over to those nations which are now in actual war with aggressor nations. Our most useful and immediate role is to act as an arsenal for them as well as for ourselves. They do not need manpower, but they do need billions of dollars’ worth of the weapons of defense.

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The time is near when they will not be able to pay for them all in ready cash. We cannot, and we will not, tell them that they must surrender, merely because of present inability to pay for the weapons which we know they must have. I do not recommend that we make them a loan of dollars with which to pay for these weapons – a loan to be repaid in dollars. I recommend that we make it possible for those nations to continue to obtain war materials in the United States, fitting their orders into our own program. And nearly all of their materiel would, if the time ever came, be useful in our own defense. Taking counsel of expert military and naval authorities, considering what is best for our own security, we are free to decide how much should be kept here and how much should be sent abroad to our friends who by their determined and heroic resistance are giving us time in which to make ready our own defense. For what we send abroad, we shall be repaid, repaid within a reasonable time following the close of hostilities, repaid in similar materials, or, at our option, in other goods of many kinds, which they can produce and which we need. Let us say to the democracies: “We Americans are vitally concerned in your defense of freedom. We are putting forth our energies, our resources and our organizing powers to give you the strength to regain and maintain a free world. We shall send you, in ever-increasing numbers, ships, planes, tanks, guns. This is our purpose and our pledge.” In fulfillment of this purpose we will not be intimidated by the threats of dictators that they will regard as a breach of international law or as an act of war our aid to the democracies which dare to resist their aggression. Such aid is not an act of war, even if a dictator should unilaterally proclaim it so to be. And when the dictators, if the dictators, are ready to make war upon us, they will not wait for an act of war on our part. They did not wait for Norway or Belgium or the Netherlands to commit an act of war. Their only interest is in a new one-way international law, which lacks mutuality in its observance, and, therefore, becomes an instrument of oppression. The happiness of future generations of Americans may well depend upon how effective and how immediate we can make our aid felt. No one can tell the exact character of the emergency situations that we may be called upon to meet. The Nation’s hands must not be tied when the Nation’s life is in danger. Yes, and we must all prepare – all of us prepare – to make the sacrifices that the emergency, almost as serious as war itself, demands. Whatever stands in the way of speed and efficiency in defense – in defense preparations of any kind – must give way to the national need. A free nation has the right to expect full cooperation from all groups. A free nation has the right to look to the leaders of business, of labor, and of agriculture to take the lead in stimulating effort, not among other groups but within their own groups. The best way of dealing with the few slackers or troublemakers in our midst is, first, to shame them by patriotic example, and, if that fails, to use the sovereignty of government to save government. As men do not live by bread alone, they do not fight by armaments alone. Those who man our defenses, and those behind them who build our defenses, must have the stamina and the courage which come from unshakable belief in the manner of life which they are defending. The mighty action that we are calling for cannot be based on a disregard of all things worth fighting for.

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The Nation takes great satisfaction and much strength from the things which have been done to make its people conscious of their individual stake in the preservation of democratic life in America. Those things have toughened the fibre of our people, have renewed their faith and strengthened their devotion to the institutions we make ready to protect. Certainly this is no time for any of us to stop thinking about the social and economic problems which are the root cause of the social revolution which is today a supreme factor in the world. For there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy. The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are: Equality of opportunity for youth and for others. Jobs for those who can work. Security for those who need it. The ending of special privilege for the few. The preservation of civil liberties for all. The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living. These are the simple, the basic things that must never be lost sight of in the turmoil and unbelievable complexity of our modern world. The inner and abiding strength of our economic and political systems is dependent upon the degree to which they fulfill these expectations. Many subjects connected with our social economy call for immediate improvement. As examples: We should bring more citizens under the coverage of old-age pensions and unemployment insurance. We should widen the opportunities for adequate medical care. We should plan a better system by which persons deserving or needing gainful employment may obtain it. I have called for personal sacrifice. And I am assured of the willingness of almost all Americans to respond to that call. A part of the sacrifice means the payment of more money in taxes. In my Budget Message I will recommend that a greater portion of this great defense program be paid for from taxation than we are paying for today. No person should try, or be allowed, to get rich out of the program; and the principle of tax payments in accordance with ability to pay should be constantly before our eyes to guide our legislation. If the Congress maintains these principles, the voters, putting patriotism ahead of pocketbooks, will give you their applause. In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression – everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way – everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want – which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants – everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear – which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor – anywhere in the world.

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That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb. To that new order we oppose the greater conception: the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear. Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change – in a perpetual peaceful revolution – a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions – without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society. This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women, and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights and keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose. To that high concept there can be no end save victory.

5.  Neville Chamberlain, “Munich Agreement” (October 3, 1938) 7 In the Munich Agreement (September 30, 1938), Great Britain and France permitted Hitler to annex the German-speaking Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, a few months after Germany had annexed Austria. By that time Hitler had already made a mockery of the Treaty of Versailles by withdrawing from the League of Nations (1933), reintroducing conscription (1935), reacquiring the highly industrialized Saar Basin (through a plebiscite in 1935), and remilitarizing the Rhineland (1936). The Munich Agreement, though celebrated at the time for averting a major war, left Czechoslovakia defenseless in the face of the Nazi invasion of the whole country in March 1939. It also emboldened Hitler to take on his next victim, Poland, in September 1939. The British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940), who signed the Munich Agreement, would declare war against Germany in September 1939 and resign eight months later in May, to be succeeded by Winston Churchill, who had been highly critical of the appeasement policies. The following is a speech that Chamberlain gave in defense of the Munich Agreement to the House of Commons. Before I come to describe the Agreement which was signed at Munich in the small hours of Friday morning last, I would like to remind the House of two things which I think it very essential not to forget when those terms are being considered. The first is this: We did not go there to decide whether the predominantly German areas in the Sudetenland should be passed over to the German Reich. That had been decided already. 7

Source: UK Parliament, https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1938/oct/03/primeministers-statement.

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­ zechoslovakia had accepted the Anglo-French proposals. What we had to consider C was the method, the conditions and the time of the transfer of the territory. The second point to remember is that time was one of the essential factors. All the elements were present on the spot for the outbreak of a conflict which might have precipitated the catastrophe. We had populations inflamed to a high degree; we had extremists on both sides ready to work up and provoke incidents; we had considerable quantities of arms which were by no means confined to regularly organised forces. Therefore, it was essential that we should quickly reach a conclusion, so that this painful and difficult operation of transfer might be carried out at the earliest possible moment and concluded as soon as was consistent, with orderly procedure, in order that we might avoid the possibility of something that might have rendered all our attempts at peaceful solution useless … To those who dislike an ultimatum, but who were anxious for a reasonable and orderly procedure, every one of [the] modifications [of the Godesberg Memorandum by the Munich Agreement] is a step in the right direction. It is no longer an ultimatum, but is a method which is carried out largely under the supervision of an international body. Before giving a verdict upon this arrangement, we should do well to avoid describing it as a personal or a national triumph for anyone. The real triumph is that it has shown that representatives of four great Powers can find it possible to agree on a way of carrying out a difficult and delicate operation by discussion instead of by force of arms, and thereby they have averted a catastrophe which would have ended civilisation as we have known it. The relief that our escape from this great peril of war has, I think, everywhere been mingled in this country with a profound feeling of sympathy. Members:  Shame. I have nothing to be ashamed of. Let those who have, hang their heads. We must feel profound sympathy for a small and gallant nation in the hour of their national grief and loss. Mr. Bellenger 8:  It is an insult to say it. Mr. Chamberlain: I say in the name of this House and of the people of this country that Czechoslovakia has earned our admiration and respect for her restraint, for her dignity, for her magnificent discipline in face of such a trial as few nations have ever been called upon to meet. […] The army, whose courage no man has ever questioned, has obeyed the order of their president, as they would equally have obeyed him if he had told them to march into the trenches. It is my hope and my belief, that under the new system of guarantees, the new Czechoslovakia will find a greater security than she has ever enjoyed in the past. […] I pass from that subject, and I would like to say a few words in respect of the various other participants, besides ourselves, in the Munich Agreement. After everything that has been said about the German Chancellor today and in the past, I do feel that the House ought to recognise the difficulty for a man in that position to take back such emphatic declarations as he had already made amidst the enthusiastic cheers of his supporters, and to recognise that in consenting, even though it were only at the last moment, to discuss with the representatives of other Powers those things which he had declared he had already decided once for all, was a real and a substantial contribution on his part. With regard to Signor Mussolini, […] I think that Europe and the world 8

Frederick Bellenger (1894–1968), a member of the British Parliament from the Labour Party.

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have reason to be grateful to the head of the Italian government for his work in contributing to a peaceful solution. […] In my view the strongest force of all, one which grew and took fresh shapes and forms every day war, the force not of any one individual, but was that unmistakable sense of unanimity among the peoples of the world that war must somehow be averted. The peoples of the British Empire were at one with those of Germany, of France and of Italy, and their anxiety, their intense desire for peace, pervaded the whole atmosphere of the conference, and I believe that that, and not threats, made possible the concessions that were made. I know the House will want to hear what I am sure it does not doubt, that throughout these discussions the Dominions, the Governments of the Dominions, have been kept in the closest touch with the march of events by telegraph and by personal contact, and I would like to say how greatly I was encouraged on each of the journeys I made to Germany by the knowledge that I went with the good wishes of the Governments of the Dominions. They shared all our anxieties and all our hopes. They rejoiced with us that peace was preserved, and with us they look forward to further efforts to consolidate what has been done. Ever since I assumed my present office my main purpose has been to work for the pacification of Europe, for the removal of those suspicions and those animosities which have so long poisoned the air. The path which leads to appeasement is long and bristles with obstacles. The question of Czechoslovakia is the latest and perhaps the most dangerous. Now that we have got past it, I feel that it may be possible to make further progress along the road to sanity. […]

6.  Duff Cooper, Speech in the House of Commons (October 3, 1938) 9 Duff Cooper (1890–1954), Conservative Party politician and historian, served as Secretary of State for War (November 1935 – May 1937) and First Lord of the Admiralty (October 1937 – October 1938) and had previously served as a Member of Parliament in the twenties and thirties. Cooper is perhaps best known today as the author of a masterful study of Talleyrand. Cooper resigned from his cabinet post following the Munich Agreement, and in this speech he explains his action. Mr. Duff Cooper: The House will, I am sure, appreciate the peculiarly difficult circumstances in which I am speaking this afternoon. It is always a painful and delicate task for a Minister who has resigned to explain his reasons to the House of Commons, and my difficulties are increased this afternoon by the fact, of which I am well aware, that the majority of the House are most anxious to hear the Prime Minister and that I am standing between them and him. But I shall have, I am afraid, to ask for the patience of the House, because I have taken a very important, for me, and difficult decision, and I feel that I shall have to demand a certain amount of time in which to make plain to the House the reasons for which I have taken it.

9

Source: UK Parliament, https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1938/oct/03/personalexplanation.

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At the last Cabinet meeting that I attended, last Friday evening, before I succeeded in finding my way to No. 10, Downing Street, I was caught up in the large crowd that were demonstrating their enthusiasm and were cheering, laughing, and singing; and there is no greater feeling of loneliness than to be in a crowd of happy, cheerful people and to feel that there is no occasion for oneself for gaiety or for cheering. That there was every cause for relief I was deeply aware, as much as anybody in this country, but that there was great cause for self-congratulation I was uncertain. Later, when I stood in the hall at Downing Street, again among enthusiastic throngs of friends and colleagues who were all as cheerful, happy, glad, and enthusiastic as the crowd in the street, and when I heard the Prime Minister from the window above saying that he had returned, like Lord Beaconsfield, with “peace with honour,” claiming that it was “peace for our time,” once again I felt lonely and isolated; and when later, in the Cabinet room, all his other colleagues were able to present him with bouquets, it was an extremely painful and bitter moment for me that all that I could offer him was my resignation. Before taking such a step as I have taken, on a question of international policy, a Minister must ask himself many questions, not the least important of which is this: Can my resignation at the present time do any material harm to His Majesty’s Government; can it weaken our position; can it suggest to our critics that there is not a united front in Great Britain? Now I would not have flattered myself that my resignation was of great importance, and I did feel confident that so small a blow could easily be borne at the present time, when I think that the Prime Minister is more popular than he has ever been at any period; but had I had any doubts with regard to that facet of the problem, they would have been set at rest, I must say, by the way in which my resignation was accepted, not, I think, with reluctance, but really with relief. I have always been a student of foreign politics. I have served ten years in the Foreign Office, and I have studied the history of this and of other countries, and I have always believed that one of the most important principles in foreign policy and the conduct of foreign policy should be to make your policy plain to other countries, to let them know where you stand and what in certain circumstances you are prepared to do. I remember so well in 1914 meeting a friend, just after the declaration of war, who had come back from the British Embassy in Berlin, and asking him whether it was the case, as I had seen it reported in the papers, that the Berlin crowd had behaved very badly and had smashed all the windows of the Embassy, and that the military had had to be called out in order to protect them. I remember my friend telling me that, in his opinion and in that of the majority of the staff, the Berlin crowd were not to blame, that the members of the British Embassy staff had great sympathy with the feelings of the populace, because, they said, “These people have never thought that there was a chance of our coming into the war.” They were assured by their Government – and the Government themselves perhaps believed it – that Britain would remain neutral, and therefore it came to them as a shock when, having already been engaged with other enemies, as they were, they found that Great Britain had turned against them. I thought then, and I have always felt, that in any other international crisis that should occur our first duty was to make it plain exactly where we stood and what we would do. I believe that the great defect in our foreign policy during recent months and recent weeks has been that we have failed to do so. During the last four weeks we have been drifting, day by day, nearer into war with Germany, and we have never said, until the last moment, and then in most uncertain terms, that we were prepared to fight. We knew that information to the opposite effect was being poured into the ears of the head

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of the German State. He had been assured, reassured, and fortified in the opinion that in no case would Great Britain fight. When Ministers met at the end of August on their return from a holiday there was an enormous accumulation of information from all parts of the world, the ordinary information from our diplomatic representatives, also secret, and less reliable information from other sources, information from Members of Parliament who had been travelling on the Continent and who had felt it their duty to write to their friends in the Cabinet and give them first-hand information which they had received from good sources. I myself had been travelling in Scandinavia and in the Baltic States, and with regard to all this information – Europe was very full of rumours at that time – it was quite extraordinary the unanimity with which it pointed to one conclusion and with which all sources suggested that there was one remedy. All information pointed to the fact that Germany was preparing for war at the end of September, and all recommendations agreed that the one way in which it could be prevented was by Great Britain making a firm stand and stating that she would be in that war, and would be upon the other side. I had urged even earlier, after the rape of Austria, that Great Britain should make a firm declaration of what her foreign policy was, and then and later I was met with this, that the people of this country are not prepared to fight for Czechoslovakia. That is perfectly true, but I tried to represent another aspect of the situation, that it was not for Czechoslovakia that we should have to fight, that it was not for Czechoslovakia that we should have been fighting if we had gone to war last week. God knows how thankful we all are to have avoided it, but we also know that the people of this country were prepared for it – resolute, prepared, and grimly determined. It was not for Serbia that we fought in 1914. It was not even for Belgium, although it occasionally suited some people to say so. We were fighting then, as we should have been fighting last week, in order that one great Power should not be allowed, in disregard of treaty obligations, of the laws of nations and the decrees of morality, to dominate by brutal force the Continent of Europe. For that principle we fought against Napoleon Buonaparte, and against Louis XIV of France and Philip II of Spain. For that principle we must ever be prepared to fight, for on the day when we are not prepared to fight for it we forfeit our Empire, our liberties, and our independence. I besought my colleagues not to see this problem always in terms of Czechoslovakia, not to review it always from the difficult strategic position of that small country, but rather to say to themselves, “A moment may come when, owing to the invasion of Czechoslovakia, a European war will begin, and when that moment comes we must take part in that war, we cannot keep out of it, and there is no doubt upon which side we shall fight. Let the world know that and it will give those who are prepared to disturb the peace reason to hold their hand.” It is perfectly true that after the assault on Austria the Prime Minister made a speech in this House – an excellent speech with every word of which I was in complete agreement – and what he said then was repeated and supported by the Chancellor of the Exchequer at Lanark. It was, however, a guarded statement. It was a statement to the effect that if there were such a war it would be unwise for anybody to count upon the possibility of our staying out. That is not the language which the dictators understand. Together with new methods and a new morality they have introduced also a new vocabulary into Europe. They have discarded the old diplomatic methods of correspondence. Is it not significant that during the whole of this crisis there has not been a German Ambassador in London

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and, so far as I am aware, the German Chargé d’Affaires has hardly visited the Foreign Office? They talk a new language, the language of the headlines of the tabloid Press, and such guarded diplomatic and reserved utterances as were made by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer mean nothing to the mentality of Herr Hitler or Signor Mussolini. I had hoped that it might be possible to make a statement to Herr Hitler before he made his speech at Nuremberg. On all sides we were being urged to do so by people in this country, by Members in this House, by Leaders of the Opposition, by the Press, by the heads of foreign States, even by Germans who were supporters of the regime and did not wish to see it plunged into a war which might destroy it. But we were always told that on no account must we irritate Herr Hitler; it was particularly dangerous to irritate him before he made a public speech, because if he were so irritated he might say some terrible things from which afterwards there would be no retreat. It seems to me that Herr Hitler never makes a speech save under the influence of considerable irritation, and the addition of one more irritant would not, I should have thought, have made a great difference, whereas the communication of a solemn fact would have produced a sobering effect. After the chance of Nuremberg was missed I had hoped that the Prime Minister at his first interview with Herr Hitler at Berchtesgaden would make the position plain, but he did not do so. Again, at Godesberg I had hoped that that statement would be made in unequivocal language. Again I was disappointed. Hitler had another speech to make in Berlin. Again an opportunity occurred of telling him exactly where we stood before he made that speech, but again the opportunity was missed, and it was only after the speech that he was informed. He was informed through the mouth of a distinguished English civil servant that in certain conditions we were prepared to fight. We know what the mentality or something of the mentality of that great dictator is. We know that a message delivered strictly according to instructions with at least three qualifying clauses was not likely to produce upon him on the morning after his great oration the effect that was desired. Honestly, I did not believe that he thought there was anything of importance in that message. It certainly produced no effect whatever upon him and we can hardly blame him. Then came the last appeal from the Prime Minister on Wednesday morning. For the first time from the beginning to the end of the four weeks of negotiations Herr Hitler was prepared to yield an inch, an ell perhaps, but to yield some measure to the representations of Great Britain. But I would remind the House that the message from the Prime Minister was not the first news that he had received that morning. At dawn he had learned of the mobilisation of the British Fleet. It is impossible to know what are the motives of man, and we shall probably never be satisfied as to which of these two sources of inspiration moved him most when he agreed to go to Munich, but we do know that never before had he given in and that then he did. I had been urging the mobilisation of the Fleet for many days. I had thought that this was the kind of language which would be easier for Herr Hitler to understand than the guarded language of diplomacy or the conditional clauses of the Civil Service. I had urged that something in that direction might be done at the end of August and before the Prime Minister went to Berchtesgaden. I had suggested that it should accompany the mission of Sir Horace Wilson. I remember the Prime Minister stating it was the one thing that would ruin that mission, and I said it was the one thing that would lead it to success. That is the deep difference between the Prime Minister and myself throughout these days. The Prime Minister has believed in addressing Herr Hitler through the language

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of sweet reasonableness. I have believed that he was more open to the language of the mailed fist. I am glad so many people think that sweet reasonableness has prevailed, but what actually did it accomplish? The Prime Minister went to Berchtesgaden with many excellent and reasonable proposals and alternatives to put before the Fuhrer, prepared to argue and negotiate, as anybody would have gone to such a meeting. He was met by an ultimatum. So far as I am aware no suggestion of an alternative was ever put forward. Once the Prime Minister found himself in the atmosphere of Berchtesgaden and face to face with the personality of Hitler he knew perfectly well, being a good judge of men, that it would be a waste of time to put forward any alternative suggestion. So he returned to us with those proposals, wrapped up in a cloak called “Self-determination,” and laid them before the Cabinet. They meant the partition of a country, the cession of territory, they meant what, when it was suggested by a newspaper some weeks or days before, had been indignantly repudiated throughout the country. After long deliberation the Cabinet decided to accept that ultimatum, and I was one of those who agreed in that decision. I felt all the difficulty of it; but I foresaw also the danger of refusal. I saw that if we were obliged to go to war it would be hard to have it said against us that we were fighting against the principle of self-determination, and I hoped that if a postponement could be reached by this compromise there was a possibility that the final disaster might be permanently avoided. It was not a pleasant task to impose upon the Government of Czechoslovakia so grievous a hurt to their country, no pleasant or easy task for those upon whose support the Government of Czechoslovakia had relied to have to come to her and say “You have got to give up all for which you were prepared to fight”; but, still, she accepted those terms. The Government of Czechoslovakia, filled with deep misgiving, and with great regret, accepted the harsh terms that were proposed to her. That was all that we had got by sweet reasonableness at Berchtesgaden. Well, I did think that when a country had agreed to be partitioned, when the Government of a country had agreed to split up the ancient Kingdom of Bohemia, which has existed behind its original frontier for more than 1,000 years, that was the ultimate demand that would be made upon it, and that after everything which Herr Hitler had asked for in the first instance had been conceded he would be willing, and we should insist, that the method of transfer of those territories should be conducted in a normal, in a civilised, manner, as such transfers have always been conducted in the past. The Prime Minister made a second visit to Germany, and at Godesberg he was received with flags, bands, trumpets and all the panoply of Nazi parade; but he returned again with nothing but an ultimatum. Sweet reasonableness had won nothing except terms which a cruel and revengeful enemy would have dictated to a beaten foe after a long war. Crueller terms could hardly be devised than those of the Godesberg ultimatum. The moment I saw them I said to myself, “If these are accepted it will be the end of all decency in the conduct of public affairs in the world.” We had a long and anxious discussion in the Cabinet with regard to the acceptance or rejection of those terms. It was decided to reject them, and that information, also, was conveyed to the German Government. Then we were face to face with an impossible position, and at the last moment – not quite the last moment, but what seemed the last moment – another effort was made, by the dispatch of an emissary to Herr Hitler with suggestions for a last appeal. That emissary’s effort was in vain, and it was only, as the House knows, on that

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fateful Wednesday morning that the final change of policy was adopted. I believe that change of policy, as I have said, was due not to any argument that had been addressed to Herr Hitler – it has never been suggested that it was – but due to the fact that for the first moment he realised, when the Fleet was mobilised, that what his advisers had been assuring him of for weeks and months was untrue and that the British people were prepared to fight in a great cause. So, last of all, he came to Munich and terms, of which the House is now aware, were devised at Munich, and those were the terms upon which this transfer of territory is to be carried out. The Prime Minister will shortly be explaining to the House the particulars in which the Munich terms differ from the Godesberg ultimatum. There are great and important differences, and it is a great triumph for the Prime Minister that he was able to acquire them. I spent the greater part of Friday trying to persuade myself that those terms were good enough for me. I tried to swallow them – I did not want to do what I have done – but they stuck in my throat, because it seemed to me that although the modifications which the Prime Minister obtained were important and of great value – the House will realise how great the value is when the Prime Minister has developed them – that still there remained the fact that that country was to be invaded, and I had thought that after accepting the humiliation of partition she should have been spared the ignominy and the horror of invasion. If anybody doubts that she is now suffering from the full horror of invasion they have only to read an article published in the “Daily Telegraph” this morning, which will convince them. After all, when Naboth had agreed to give up his vineyard he should have been allowed to pack up his goods in peace and depart, but the German Government, having got their man down, were not to be deprived of the pleasure of kicking him. Invasion remained; even the date of invasion remained unaltered. The date laid down by Herr Hitler was not to be changed. There are five stages, but those stages are almost as rapid as an army can move. Invasion and the date remained the same. Therefore, the works, fortifications, and guns on emplacements upon which that poor country had spent an enormous amount of its wealth were to be handed over intact. Just as the German was not to be deprived of the pleasure of kicking a man when he was down, so the army was not to be robbed of its loot. That was another term in the ultimatum which I found it impossible to accept. That was why I failed to bring myself to swallow the terms that were proposed – although I recognised the great service that the Prime Minister had performed in obtaining very material changes in them which would result in great benefit and a great lessening of the sufferings of the people of Czechoslovakia. Then he brought home also from Munich something more than the terms to which we had agreed. At the last moment, at the farewell meeting, he signed with the Fuhrer, a joint declaration. An Honorable Member: Secret. I do not think there was anything secret about the declaration. The joint declaration has been published to the world. I saw no harm, no great harm and no very obvious harm, in the terms of that declaration, but I would suggest that for the Prime Minister of England to sign, without consulting with his colleagues and without, so far as I am aware, any reference to his Allies, obviously without any communication with the Dominions and without the assistance of any expert diplomatic advisers, such a declaration with the dictator of a great State, is not the way in which the foreign affairs of the British Empire should be ­conducted.

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There is another aspect of this joint declaration. After all, what does it say? That Great Britain and Germany will not go to war in future and that everything will be settled by negotiation. Was it ever our intention to go to war? Was it ever our intention not to settle things by communication and counsel? There is a danger. We must remember that this is not all that we are left with as the result of what has happened during the last few weeks. We are left, and we must all acknowledge it, with a loss of esteem on the part of countries that trusted us. We are left also with a tremendous commitment. For the first time in our history we have committed ourselves to defend a frontier in Central Europe. Brigadier-General Sir Henry Croft:  It is what you have been asking for. Mr. Cooper: We are left with the additional serious commitment that we are guaranteeing a frontier that we have at the same time destroyed. We have taken away the defences of Czechoslovakia in the same breath as we have guaranteed them, as though you were to deal a man a mortal blow and at the same time insure his life. I was in favour of giving this commitment. I felt that as we had taken so much away we must, in honour, give something in return, but I realised what the commitment meant. It meant giving a commitment to defend a frontier in Central Europe, a difficult frontier to defend because it is surrounded on all sides by enemies. I realised that giving this commitment must mean for ourselves a tremendous quickening-up of our rearmament schemes on an entirely new basis, a far broader basis upon which they must be carried out in future. I had always been in favour of maintaining an army that could take a serious part in Continental war. I am afraid I differed from the Prime Minister, when I was at the War Office and he was at the Treasury two years ago or more, on this point, but if we are now committed to defend a frontier in Central Europe, it is, in my opinion, absolutely imperative that we should maintain an Army upon something like a Continental basis. It is no secret that the attitude maintained by this Government during recent weeks would have been far stiffer had our defences been far stronger. It has been said that we shall necessarily now increase both the speed at which they are reconditioned and the scale upon which they are reconditioned, but how are we to justify the extra burden laid upon the people of Great Britain if we are told at the same time that there is no fear of war with Germany and that, in the opinion of the Prime Minister, this settlement means peace in our time? That is one of the most profoundly disquieting aspects of the situation. The Prime Minister has confidence in the good will and in the word of Herr Hitler, although when Herr Hitler broke the Treaty of Versailles he undertook to keep the Treaty of Locarno, and when he broke the Treaty of Locarno he undertook not to interfere further, or to have further territorial aims, in Europe. When he entered Austria by force he authorised his henchmen to give an authoritative assurance that he would not interfere with Czechoslovakia. That was less than six months ago. Still, the Prime Minister believes that he can rely upon the good faith of Hitler; he believes that Hitler is interested only in Germany, as the Prime Minister was assured. Well, there are Germans in other countries. There are Germans in Switzerland, in Denmark and in Alsace; I think that one of the only countries in Europe in which there are no Germans is Spain and yet there are rumours that Germany has taken an interest in that country. But the Prime Minister believed – and he has the advantage over us, or over most of us, that he has met the man – that he can come to a reasonable settlement of all outstanding questions between us. Herr Hitler said that he has got to have some settlement about

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colonies, but he said that this will never be a question of war. The Prime Minister attaches considerable importance to those words, but what do they mean? Do they mean that Herr Hitler will take “No” for an answer? He has never taken it yet. Or do they mean that he believes that he will get away with this, as he has got away with everything else, without fighting, by well-timed bluff, bluster and blackmail? Otherwise it means very little. The Prime Minister may be right. I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, with the deepest sincerity, that I hope and pray that he is right, but I cannot believe what he believes. I wish I could. Therefore, I can be of no assistance to him in his Government. I should be only a hindrance, and it is much better that I should go. I remember when we were discussing the Godesberg ultimatum that I said that if I were a party to persuading, or even to suggesting to, the Czechoslovak Government that they should accept that ultimatum, I should never be able to hold up my head again. I have forfeited a great deal. I have given up an office that I loved, work in which I was deeply interested and a staff of which any man might be proud. I have given up associations in that work with my colleagues with whom I have maintained for many years the most harmonious relations, not only as colleagues but as friends. I have given up the privilege of serving as lieutenant to a leader whom I still regard with the deepest admiration and affection. I have ruined, perhaps, my political career. But that is a little matter; I have retained something which is to me of great value – I can still walk about the world with my head erect.

7.  Winston Churchill, “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat” (May 13, 1940) 10 Winston Churchill (1874–1965) served as the British Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945 (and again from 1951–55) and led his country through some of the most precarious moments in its history. The following speech in the House of Commons is his first public address as Prime Minister. Three days before the speech, Hitler had launched his major offensive against France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, all of whom would surrender a month later, leaving England as the sole democracy directly facing Hitler. The title phrase appeared on the Bank of England’s new five-pound note in 2016. I beg to move, That this House welcomes the formation of a Government representing the united and inflexible resolve of the nation to prosecute the war with Germany to a victorious conclusion. On Friday evening last I received His Majesty’s commission to form a new Administration. It is the evident wish and will of Parliament and the nation that this should be conceived on the broadest possible basis and that it should include all parties, both those who supported the late Government and also the parties of the Opposition. 10

Source: UK Parliament, www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/privatelives/yourcountry/collections/churchillexhibition/churchill-the-orator/blood-toil-sweatand-tears.

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I  have completed the most important part of this task. A War Cabinet has been formed of five Members, representing, with the Opposition Liberals, the unity of the nation. The three party Leaders have agreed to serve, either in the War Cabinet or in high executive office. The three Fighting Services have been filled. It was necessary that this should be done in one single day, on account of the extreme urgency and rigour of events. A number of other positions, key positions, were filled yesterday, and I am submitting a further list to His Majesty to-night. I hope to complete the appointment of the principal Ministers during to-morrow. The appointment of the other Ministers usually takes a little longer, but I trust that, when Parliament meets again, this part of my task will be completed, and that the administration will be complete in all respects. I considered it in the public interest to suggest that the House should be summoned to meet today. Mr. Speaker agreed, and took the necessary steps, in accordance with the powers conferred upon him by the Resolution of the House. At the end of the proceedings today, the Adjournment of the House will be proposed until Tuesday, 21st May, with, of course, provision for earlier meeting, if need be. The business to be considered during that week will be notified to Members at the earliest opportunity. I now invite the House, by the Motion which stands in my name, to record its approval of the steps taken and to declare its confidence in the new Government. To form an Administration of this scale and complexity is a serious undertaking in itself, but it must be remembered that we are in the preliminary stage of one of the greatest battles in history, that we are in action at many other points in Norway and in Holland, that we have to be prepared in the Mediterranean, that the air battle is continuous and that many preparations, such as have been indicated by my Hon. friend below the Gangway,11 have to be made here at home. In this crisis I hope I may be pardoned if I do not address the House at any length today. I hope that any of my friends and colleagues, or former colleagues, who are affected by the political reconstruction, will make allowance, all allowance, for any lack of ceremony with which it has been necessary to act. I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realised; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, “Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.” 11

The phrase refers to the benches in the House of Commons that are located beyond the center aisle and that are generally occupied by those not belonging to either the government or the opposition’s Shadow Cabinet. Churchill may refer here to the first speaker during the preceding Questions to the Secretary of State for War, Mr. Henderson Stewart (1897–1961).

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8.  Winston Churchill, “Their Finest Hour” (excerpts) (June 18, 1940) 12 Winston Churchill (1874–1965) gave the following address to the House of Commons in one of the darkest moments for England during WWII. Two days earlier, France, Britain’s most powerful European ally, had sought an armistice with Nazi Germany, thereby removing the last major obstacle to Hitler’s domination of continental Europe. I spoke the other day of the colossal military disaster which occurred when the French High Command failed to withdraw the northern Armies from Belgium at the moment when they knew that the French front was decisively broken at Sedan and on the Meuse. This delay entailed the loss of fifteen or sixteen French divisions and threw out of action for the critical period the whole of the British Expeditionary Force. Our Army and 120,000 French troops were indeed rescued by the British Navy from Dunkirk but only with the loss of their cannon, vehicles and modern equipment. This loss inevitably took some weeks to repair, and in the first two of those weeks the battle in France has been lost. When we consider the heroic resistance made by the French Army against heavy odds in this battle, the enormous losses inflicted upon the enemy and the evident exhaustion of the enemy, it may well be the thought that these 25 divisions of the best-trained and best-equipped troops might have turned the scale. However, General Weygand had to fight without them. Only three British divisions or their equivalent were able to stand in the line with their French comrades. They have suffered severely, but they have fought well. We sent every man we could to France as fast as we could re-equip and transport their formations. I am not reciting these facts for the purpose of recrimination. That I judge to be utterly futile and even harmful. We cannot afford it. I recite them in order to explain why it was we did not have, as we could have had, between twelve and fourteen British divisions fighting in the line in this great battle instead of only three. Now I put all this aside. I put it on the shelf, from which the historians, when they have time, will select their documents to tell their stories. We have to think of the future and not of the past. This also applies in a small way to our own affairs at home. There are many who would hold an inquest in the House of Commons on the conduct of the Governments – and of Parliaments, for they are in it, too – during the years which led up to this catastrophe. They seek to indict those who were responsible for the guidance of our affairs. This also would be a foolish and pernicious process. There are too many in it. Let each man search his conscience and search his speeches. I frequently search mine. […] The disastrous military events which have happened during the past fortnight have not come to me with any sense of surprise. Indeed, I indicated a fortnight ago as clearly as I could to the House that the worst possibilities were open; and I made it perfectly clear then that whatever happened in France would make no difference to the resolve of Britain and the British Empire to fight on, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. […] We have, therefore, in this Island today a very large and powerful military force. This force comprises all our best-trained and our finest troops, including scores of thousands

12

Source: UK Parliament, https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1940/jun/18/warsituation.

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of those who have already measured their quality against the Germans and found themselves at no disadvantage. We have under arms at the present time in this Island over a million and a quarter men. Behind these we have the Local Defense Volunteers, numbering half a million, only a portion of whom, however, are yet armed with rifles or other firearms. We have incorporated into our Defense Forces every man for whom we have a weapon. We expect very large additions to our weapons in the near future, and in preparation for this we intend forthwith to call up, drill and train further large numbers. Those who are not called up, or else are employed during the vast business of munitions production in all its branches – and their ramifications are innumerable – will serve their country best by remaining at their ordinary work until they receive their summons. We have also over here Dominions armies. The Canadians had actually landed in France, but have now been safely withdrawn, much disappointed, but in perfect order, with all their artillery and equipment. And these very high-class forces from the Dominions will now take part in the defense of the Mother Country. […] Here is where we come to the Navy – and after all, we have a Navy. Some people seem to forget that we have a Navy. We must remind them. For the last thirty years I have been concerned in discussions about the possibilities of oversea invasion, and I took the responsibility on behalf of the Admiralty, at the beginning of the last war, of allowing all regular troops to be sent out of the country. That was a very serious step to take, because our Territorials had only just been called up and were quite untrained. Therefore, this Island was for several months particularly denuded of fighting troops. The Admiralty had confidence at that time in their ability to prevent a mass invasion even though at that time the Germans had a magnificent battle fleet in the proportion of 10 to 16, even though they were capable of fighting a general engagement every day and any day, whereas now they have only a couple of heavy ships worth speaking of – the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau. We are also told that the Italian Navy is to come out and gain sea superiority in these waters. If they seriously intend it, I shall only say that we shall be delighted to offer Signor Mussolini a free and safeguarded passage through the Strait of Gibraltar in order that he may play the part to which he aspires. There is a general curiosity in the British Fleet to find out whether the Italians are up to the level they were at in the last war or whether they have fallen off at all. Therefore, it seems to me that as far as sea-borne invasion on a great scale is concerned, we are far more capable of meeting it today than we were at many periods in the last war and during the early months of this war, before our other troops were trained, and while the B.E.F. had proceeded abroad. Now, the Navy have never pretended to be able to prevent raids by bodies of 5,000 or 10,000 men flung suddenly across and thrown ashore at several points on the coast some dark night or foggy morning. The efficacy of sea power, especially under modern conditions, depends upon the invading force being of large size; it has to be of large size, in view of our military strength, to be of any use. If it is of large size, then the Navy have something they can find and meet and, as it were, bite on. Now, we must remember that even five divisions, however lightly equipped, would require 200 to 250 ships, and with modern air reconnaissance and photography it would not be easy to collect such an armada, marshal it, and conduct it across the sea without any powerful naval forces to escort it; and there would be very great possibilities, to put it mildly, that this armada would be intercepted long before it reached the coast, and all the men drowned in the sea or, at the worst, blown to pieces with their equipment while they were trying to land. We also have a great system of minefields, recently strongly reinforced, through which we alone know the

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channels. If the enemy tries to sweep passages through these minefields, it will be the task of the Navy to destroy the mine-sweepers and any other forces employed to protect them. There should be no difficulty in this, owing to our great superiority at sea. […] This brings me, naturally, to the great question of invasion from the air, and of the impending struggle between the British and German Air Forces. It seems quite clear that no invasion on a scale beyond the capacity of our land forces to crush speedily is likely to take place from the air until our Air Force has been definitely overpowered. In the meantime, there may be raids by parachute troops and attempted descents of airborne soldiers. We should be able to give those gentry a warm reception both in the air and on the ground, if they reach it in any condition to continue the dispute. But the great question is: Can we break Hitler’s air weapon? Now, of course, it is a very great pity that we have not got an Air Force at least equal to that of the most powerful enemy within striking distance of these shores. But we have a very powerful Air Force which has proved itself far superior in quality, both in men and in many types of machine, to what we have met so far in the numerous and fierce air battles which have been fought with the Germans. In France, where we were at a considerable disadvantage and lost many machines on the ground when they were standing round the aerodromes, we were accustomed to inflict in the air losses of as much as two and two-and-a-half to one. In the fighting over Dunkirk, which was a sort of no-man’s-land, we undoubtedly beat the German Air Force, and gained the mastery of the local air, inflicting here a loss of three or four to one day after day. Anyone who looks at the photographs which were published a week or so ago of the re-embarkation, showing the masses of troops assembled on the beach and forming an ideal target for hours at a time, must realize that this re-embarkation would not have been possible unless the enemy had resigned all hope of recovering air superiority at that time and at that place. In the defense of this Island the advantages to the defenders will be much greater than they were in the fighting around Dunkirk. We hope to improve on the rate of three or four to one which was realized at Dunkirk; and in addition all our injured machines and their crews which get down safely – and, surprisingly, a very great many injured machines and men do get down safely in modern air fighting – all of these will fall, in an attack upon these Islands, on friendly soil and live to fight another day; whereas all the injured enemy machines and their complements will be total losses as far as the war is concerned. […] There remains, of course, the danger of bombing attacks, which will certainly be made very soon upon us by the bomber forces of the enemy. It is true that the German bomber force is superior in numbers to ours; but we have a very large bomber force also, which we shall use to strike at military targets in Germany without intermission. I do not at all underrate the severity of the ordeal which lies before us; but I believe our countrymen will show themselves capable of standing up to it, like the brave men of Barcelona, and will be able to stand up to it, and carry on in spite of it, at least as well as any other people in the world. Much will depend upon this; every man and every woman will have the chance to show the finest qualities of their race, and render the highest service to their cause. For all of us, at this time, whatever our sphere, our station, our occupation or our duties, it will be a help to remember the famous lines: “He nothing common did or mean / Upon that memorable scene.”13 […] 13

From Andrew Marvell, “An Horation Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland.”

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If Hitler can bring under his despotic control the industries of the countries he has conquered, this will add greatly to his already vast armament output. On the other hand, this will not happen immediately, and we are now assured of immense, continuous and increasing support in supplies and munitions of all kinds from the United States; and especially of aeroplanes and pilots from the Dominions and across the oceans coming from regions which are beyond the reach of enemy bombers. I do not see how any of these factors can operate to our detriment on balance before the winter comes; and the winter will impose a strain upon the Nazi regime, with almost all Europe writhing and starving under its cruel heel, which, for all their ruthlessness, will run them very hard. We must not forget that from the moment when we declared war on the 3rd September it was always possible for Germany to turn all her Air Force upon this country, together with any other devices of invasion she might conceive, and that France could have done little or nothing to prevent her doing so. We have, therefore, lived under this danger, in principle and in a slightly modified form, during all these months. In the meanwhile, however, we have enormously improved our methods of defense, and we have learned what we had no right to assume at the beginning, namely, that the individual aircraft and the individual British pilot have a sure and definite superiority. Therefore, in casting up this dread balance sheet and contemplating our dangers with a disillusioned eye, I see great reason for intense vigilance and exertion, but none whatever for panic or despair. […] What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

9.  John F. Kennedy, The Cuban Missile Crisis (October 22, 1962) 14 In October 1962, after American spy planes had confirmed the presence of Soviet missile launching sites in Cuba, President John F. Kennedy (1917–63) gave a televised address to the nation, explaining the significance of the Soviet threat and what America intended to do about it. Kennedy’s firm but skillful public response helped defuse a situation in which the two superpowers came close to a full-scale war.

14

Source: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/ historic-speeches/address-during-the-cuban-missile-crisis.

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Good evening my fellow citizens: This Government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet Military buildup on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere. Upon receiving the first preliminary hard information of this nature last Tuesday morning at 9 a.m., I directed that our surveillance be stepped up. And having now confirmed and completed our evaluation of the evidence and our decision on a course of action, this Government feels obliged to report this new crisis to you in fullest detail. The characteristics of these new missile sites indicate two distinct types of installations. Several of them include medium range ballistic missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead for a distance of more than 1,000 nautical miles. Each of these missiles, in short, is capable of striking Washington, D.C., the Panama Canal, Cape Canaveral, Mexico City, or any other city in the southeastern part of the United States, in Central America, or in the Caribbean area. Additional sites not yet completed appear to be designed for intermediate range ballistic missiles – capable of traveling more than twice as far – and thus capable of striking most of the major cities in the Western Hemisphere, ranging as far north as Hudson Bay, Canada, and as far south as Lima, Peru. In addition, jet bombers, capable of carrying nuclear weapons, are now being uncrated and assembled in Cuba, while the necessary air bases are being prepared. ­ resence This urgent transformation of Cuba into an important strategic base – by the p of these large, long range, and clearly offensive weapons of sudden mass destruction – constitutes an explicit threat to the peace and security of all the Americas, in flagrant and deliberate defiance of the Rio Pact of 1947, the traditions of this Nation and hemisphere, the joint resolution of the 87th Congress, the Charter of the United Nations, and my own public warnings to the Soviets on September 4 and 13. This action also contradicts the repeated assurances of Soviet spokesmen, both publicly and privately delivered, that the arms buildup in Cuba would retain its original defensive character, and that the Soviet Union had no need or desire to station strategic missiles on the territory of any other nation. The size of this undertaking makes clear that it has been planned for some months. Yet only last month, after I had made clear the distinction between any introduction of ground-to-ground missiles and the existence of defensive antiaircraft missiles, the Soviet Government publicly stated on September 11, and I quote, “the armaments and military equipment sent to Cuba are designed exclusively for defensive purposes,” that, and I quote the Soviet Government, “there is no need for the Soviet Government to shift its weapons … for a retaliatory blow to any other country, for instance Cuba,” and that, and I quote their government, “the Soviet Union has so powerful rockets to carry these nuclear warheads that there is no need to search for sites for them beyond the boundaries of the Soviet Union.” That statement was false. Only last Thursday, as evidence of this rapid offensive buildup was already in my hand, Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko told me in my office that he was instructed to make it clear once again, as he said his government had already done, that Soviet assistance to Cuba, and I quote, “pursued solely the purpose of contributing to the defense capabilities of Cuba,” that, and I quote him, “training by Soviet specialists of Cuban nationals in handling defensive armaments was by no means offensive, and if it

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were otherwise,” Mr. Gromyko went on, “the Soviet Government would never become involved in rendering such assistance.” That statement also was false. Neither the United States of America nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small. We no longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation’s security to constitute maximum peril. Nuclear weapons are so destructive and ballistic missiles are so swift, that any substantially increased possibility of their use or any sudden change in their deployment may well be regarded as a definite threat to peace. For many years both the Soviet Union and the United States, recognizing this fact, have deployed strategic nuclear weapons with great care, never upsetting the precarious status quo which insured that these weapons would not be used in the absence of some vital challenge. Our own strategic missiles have never been transferred to the territory of any other nation under a cloak of secrecy and deception; and our history – unlike that of the Soviets since the end of World War II – demonstrates that we have no desire to dominate or conquer any other nation or impose our system upon its people. Nevertheless, American citizens have become adjusted to living daily on the Bull’s-eye of Soviet missiles located inside the U.S.S.R. or in submarines. In that sense, missiles in Cuba add to an already clear and present danger – although it should be noted the nations of Latin America have never previously been subjected to a potential nuclear threat. But this secret, swift, and extraordinary buildup of Communist missiles – in an area well known to have a special and historical relationship to the United States and the nations of the Western Hemisphere, in violation of Soviet assurances, and in defiance of American and hemispheric policy – this sudden, clandestine decision to station strategic weapons for the first time outside of Soviet soil – is a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo which cannot be accepted by this country, if our courage and our commitments are ever to be trusted again by either friend or foe. The 1930s taught us a clear lesson: aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged ultimately leads to war. This nation is opposed to war. We are also true to our word. Our unswerving objective, therefore, must be to prevent the use of these missiles against this or any other country, and to secure their withdrawal or elimination from the Western Hemisphere. Our policy has been one of patience and restraint, as befits a peaceful and powerful nation, which leads a worldwide alliance. We have been determined not to be diverted from our central concerns by mere irritants and fanatics. But now further action is required – and it is under way; and these actions may only be the beginning. We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth – but neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced. Acting, therefore, in the defense of our own security and of the entire Western Hemisphere, and under the authority entrusted to me by the Constitution as endorsed by the resolution of the Congress, I have directed that the following initial steps be taken immediately: First: To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation or port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of

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cargo and carriers. We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948. Second: I have directed the continued and increased close surveillance of Cuba and its military buildup. The foreign ministers of the OAS [Organization of American States], in their communiqué of October 6, rejected secrecy in such matters in this hemisphere. Should these offensive military preparations continue, thus increasing the threat to the hemisphere, further action will be justified. I have directed the Armed Forces to prepare for any eventualities; and I trust that in the interest of both the Cuban people and the Soviet technicians at the sites, the hazards to all concerned in continuing this threat will be recognized. Third: It shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union. Fourth: As a necessary military precaution, I have reinforced our base at Guantanamo, evacuated today the dependents of our personnel there, and ordered additional military units to be on a standby alert basis. Fifth: We are calling tonight for an immediate meeting of the Organ of Consultation under the Organization of American States, to consider this threat to hemispheric security and to invoke articles 6 and 8 of the Rio Treaty in support of all necessary action. The United Nations Charter allows for regional security arrangements – and the nations of this hemisphere decided long ago against the military presence of outside powers. Our other allies around the world have also been alerted. Sixth: Under the Charter of the United Nations, we are asking tonight that an emergency meeting of the Security Council be convoked without delay to take action against this latest Soviet threat to world peace. Our resolution will call for the prompt dismantling and withdrawal of all offensive weapons in Cuba, under the supervision of U.N. observers, before the quarantine can be lifted. Seventh and finally: I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace and to stable relations between our two nations. I call upon him further to abandon this course of world domination, and to join in an historic effort to end the perilous arms race and to transform the history of man. He has an opportunity now to move the world back from the abyss of destruction – by returning to his government’s own words that it had no need to station missiles outside its own territory, and withdrawing these weapons from Cuba – by refraining from any action which will widen or deepen the present crisis – and then by participating in a search for peaceful and permanent solutions. This Nation is prepared to present its case against the Soviet threat to peace, and our own proposals for a peaceful world, at any time and in any forum – in the OAS, in the United Nations, or in any other meeting that could be useful – without limiting our freedom of action. We have in the past made strenuous efforts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. We have proposed the elimination of all arms and military bases in a fair and effective disarmament treaty. We are prepared to discuss new proposals for the removal of tensions on both sides – including the possibility of a genuinely independent Cuba, free to determine its own destiny. We have no wish to war with the Soviet Union – for we are a peaceful people who desire to live in peace with all other peoples. But it is difficult to settle or even discuss these problems in an atmosphere of intimidation. That is why this latest Soviet threat – or any other threat which is made either independently or in response to our actions this week – must and will be met with

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determination. Any hostile move anywhere in the world against the safety and freedom of peoples to whom we are committed – including in particular the brave people of West Berlin – will be met by whatever action is needed. Finally, I want to say a few words to the captive people of Cuba, to whom this speech is being directly carried by special radio facilities. I speak to you as a friend, as one who knows of your deep attachment to your fatherland, as one who shares your aspirations for liberty and justice for all. And I have watched and the American people have watched with deep sorrow how your nationalist revolution was betrayed – and how your fatherland fell under foreign domination. Now your leaders are no longer Cuban leaders inspired by Cuban ideals. They are puppets and agents of an international conspiracy which has turned Cuba against your friends and neighbors in the Americas – and turned it into the first Latin American country to become a target for nuclear war – the first Latin American country to have these weapons on its soil. These new weapons are not in your interest. They contribute nothing to your peace and well-being. They can only undermine it. But this country has no wish to cause you to suffer or to impose any system upon you. We know that your lives and land are being used as pawns by those who deny your freedom. Many times in the past, the Cuban people have risen to throw out tyrants who destroyed their liberty. And I have no doubt that most Cubans today look forward to the time when they will be truly free – free from foreign domination, free to choose their own leaders, free to select their own system, free to own their own land, free to speak and write and worship without fear or degradation. And then shall Cuba be welcomed back to the society of free nations and to the associations of this hemisphere. My fellow citizens: let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out. No one can see precisely what course it will take or what costs or casualties will be incurred. Many months of sacrifice and self-discipline lie ahead – months in which our patience and our will will be tested – months in which many threats and denunciations will keep us aware of our dangers. But the greatest danger of all would be to do nothing. The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are – but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world. The cost of freedom is always high – and Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission. Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right – not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved. Thank you and good night.

10.  Winston Churchill, Iron Curtain Speech, “The Sinews of Peace” (March 5, 1946) 15 At the time of this speech, Churchill had just led his nation to victory in Europe against Nazi Germany and was serving as the leader of the opposition 15

Source: Nato On-line Library, www.nato.int/docu/speech/1946/s460305a_e.htm.

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in Parliament. He accepted President Truman’s invitation to visit Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, Truman’s home state. The speech is best known for its use of the image of an “iron curtain” separating the free West from the unfree East, under the thumb of Stalin’s Soviet Union. I am glad to come to Westminster College this afternoon, and am complimented that you should give me a degree. The name “Westminster” is somehow familiar to me. I seem to have heard of it before. Indeed, it was at Westminster that I received a very large part of my education in politics, dialectic, rhetoric, and one or two other things. In fact we have both been educated at the same, or similar, or, at any rate, kindred establishments. It is also an honor, perhaps almost unique, for a private visitor to be introduced to an academic audience by the President of the United States. Amid his heavy burdens, duties, and responsibilities – unsought but not recoiled from – the President has traveled a thousand miles to dignify and magnify our meeting here today and to give me an opportunity of addressing this kindred nation, as well as my own countrymen across the ocean, and perhaps some other countries too. The President has told you that it is his wish, as I am sure it is yours, that I should have full liberty to give my true and faithful counsel in these anxious and baffling times. I shall certainly avail myself of this freedom, and feel the more right to do so because any private ambitions I may have cherished in my younger days have been satisfied beyond my wildest dreams. Let me, however, make it clear that I have no official mission or status of any kind, and that I speak only for myself. There is nothing here but what you see. I can therefore allow my mind, with the experience of a lifetime, to play over the problems which beset us on the morrow of our absolute victory in arms, and to try to make sure with what strength I have that what has been gained with so much sacrifice and suffering shall be preserved for the future glory and safety of mankind. The United States stands at this time at the pinnacle of world power. It is a solemn moment for the American Democracy. For with primacy in power is also joined an awe-inspiring accountability to the future. If you look around you, you must feel not only the sense of duty done but also you must feel anxiety lest you fall below the level of achievement. Opportunity is here now, clear and shining for both our countries. To reject it or ignore it or fritter it away will bring upon us all the long reproaches of the after-time. It is necessary that constancy of mind, persistency of purpose, and the grand simplicity of decision shall guide and rule the conduct of the English-speaking peoples in peace as they did in war. We must, and I believe we shall, prove ourselves equal to this severe requirement. When American military men approach some serious situation they are wont to write at the head of their directive the words “over-all strategic concept.” There is wisdom in this, as it leads to clarity of thought. What then is the over-all strategic concept which we should inscribe today? It is nothing less than the safety and welfare, the freedom and progress, of all the homes and families of all the men and women in all the lands. And here I speak particularly of the myriad cottage or apartment homes where the wage-earner strives amid the accidents and difficulties of life to guard his wife and children from privation and bring the family up in the fear of the Lord, or upon ethical conceptions which often play their potent part. To give security to these countless homes, they must be shielded from the two giant marauders, war and tyranny. We all know the frightful disturbances in which the

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ordinary family is plunged when the curse of war swoops down upon the bread-winner and those for whom he works and contrives. The awful ruin of Europe, with all its vanished glories, and of large parts of Asia glares us in the eyes. When the designs of wicked men or the aggressive urge of mighty States dissolve over large areas the frame of civilized society, humble folk are confronted with difficulties with which they cannot cope. For them all is distorted, all is broken, even ground to pulp. When I stand here this quiet afternoon I shudder to visualize what is actually happening to millions now and what is going to happen in this period when famine stalks the earth. None can compute what has been called “the unestimated sum of human pain.” Our supreme task and duty is to guard the homes of the common people from the horrors and miseries of another war. We are all agreed on that. Our American military colleagues, after having proclaimed their “over-all strategic concept” and computed available resources, always proceed to the next step – namely, the method. Here again there is widespread agreement. A world organization has already been erected for the prime purpose of preventing war, UNO [United Nations Organization], the successor of the League of Nations, with the decisive addition of the United States and all that means, is already at work. We must make sure that its work is fruitful, that it is a reality and not a sham, that it is a force for action, and not merely a frothing of words, that it is a true temple of peace in which the shields of many nations can someday be hung up, and not merely a cockpit in a Tower of Babel. Before we cast away the solid assurances of national armaments for self-preservation we must be certain that our temple is built, not upon shifting sands or quagmires, but upon the rock. Anyone can see with his eyes open that our path will be difficult and also long, but if we persevere together as we did in the two world wars – though not, alas, in the interval between them – I cannot doubt that we shall achieve our common purpose in the end. I have, however, a definite and practical proposal to make for action. Courts and magistrates may be set up but they cannot function without sheriffs and constables. The United Nations Organization must immediately begin to be equipped with an international armed force. In such a matter we can only go step by step, but we must begin now. I propose that each of the Powers and States should be invited to delegate a certain number of air squadrons to the service of the world organization. These squadrons would be trained and prepared in their own countries, but would move around in rotation from one country to another. They would wear the uniform of their own countries but with different badges. They would not be required to act against their own nation, but in other respects they would be directed by the world organization. This might be started on a modest scale and would grow as confidence grew. I wished to see this done after the First World War, and I devoutly trust it may be done forthwith. It would nevertheless be wrong and imprudent to entrust the secret knowledge or experience of the atomic bomb, which the United States, Great Britain, and Canada now share, to the world organization, while it is still in its infancy. It would be criminal madness to cast it adrift in this still agitated and un-united world. No one in any country has slept less well in their beds because this knowledge and the method and the raw materials to apply it, are at present largely retained in American hands. I do not believe we should all have slept so soundly had the positions been reversed and if some Communist or neo-Fascist State monopolized for the time being these dread agencies. The fear of them alone might easily have been used to enforce totalitarian systems upon the free democratic world, with consequences appalling to human imagination. God has willed that this shall not be and we have at least a breathing space to set our house

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in order before this peril has to be encountered: and even then, if no effort is spared, we should still possess so formidable a superiority as to impose effective deterrents upon its employment, or threat of employment, by others. Ultimately, when the essential brotherhood of man is truly embodied and expressed in a world organization with all the necessary practical safeguards to make it effective, these powers would naturally be confided to that world organization. Now I come to the second danger of these two marauders which threatens the cottage, the home, and the ordinary people – namely, tyranny. We cannot be blind to the fact that the liberties enjoyed by individual citizens throughout the British Empire are not valid in a considerable number of countries, some of which are very powerful. In these States control is enforced upon the common people by various kinds of all-embracing police governments. The power of the State is exercised without restraint, either by dictators or by compact oligarchies operating through a privileged party and a political police. It is not our duty at this time when difficulties are so numerous to interfere forcibly in the internal affairs of countries which we have not conquered in war. But we must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence. All this means that the people of any country have the right, and should have the power by constitutional action, by free unfettered elections, with secret ballot, to choose or change the character or form of government under which they dwell; that freedom of speech and thought should reign; that courts of justice, independent of the executive, unbiased by any party, should administer laws which have received the broad assent of large majorities or are consecrated by time and custom. Here are the title deeds of freedom which should lie in every cottage home. Here is the message of the British and American peoples to mankind. Let us preach what we practice; let us practice what we preach. I have now stated the two great dangers which menace the homes of the people: war and tyranny. I have not yet spoken of poverty and privation which are in many cases the prevailing anxiety. But if the dangers of war and tyranny are removed, there is no doubt that science and co-operation can bring in the next few years to the world, certainly in the next few decades newly taught in the sharpening school of war, an expansion of material well-being beyond anything that has yet occurred in human experience. Now, at this sad and breathless moment, we are plunged in the hunger and distress which are the aftermath of our stupendous struggle; but this will pass and may pass quickly, and there is no reason except human folly or sub-human crime which should deny to all the nations the inauguration and enjoyment of an age of plenty. I have often used words which I learned fifty years ago from a great Irish-American orator, a friend of mine, Mr. Bourke Cockran. “There is enough for all. The earth is a generous mother; she will provide in plentiful abundance food for all her children if they will but cultivate her soil in justice and in peace.” So far I feel that we are in full agreement. Now, while still pursuing the method of realizing our overall strategic concept, I come to the crux of what I have traveled here to say. Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organization will be gained without what I have called the fraternal association of the English-speaking peoples. This means a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States. This is no time for generalities,

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and I will venture to be precise. Fraternal association requires not only the growing friendship and mutual understanding between our two vast but kindred systems of society, but the continuance of the intimate relationship between our military advisers, leading to common study of potential dangers, the similarity of weapons and manuals of instructions, and to the interchange of officers and cadets at technical colleges. It should carry with it the continuance of the present facilities for mutual security by the joint use of all Naval and Air Force bases in the possession of either country all over the world. This would perhaps double the mobility of the American Navy and Air Force. It would greatly expand that of the British Empire Forces and it might well lead, if and as the world calms down, to important financial savings. Already we use together a large number of islands; more may well be entrusted to our joint care in the near future. The United States has already a Permanent Defense Agreement with the Dominion of Canada, which is so devotedly attached to the British Commonwealth and Empire. This Agreement is more effective than many of those which have often been made under formal alliances. This principle should be extended to all British Commonwealths with full reciprocity. Thus, whatever happens, and thus only, shall we be secure ourselves and able to work together for the high and simple causes that are dear to us and bode no ill to any. Eventually there may come – I feel eventually there will come – the principle of common citizenship, but that we may be content to leave to destiny, whose outstretched arm many of us can already clearly see. There is however an important question we must ask ourselves. Would a special relationship between the United States and the British Commonwealth be inconsistent with our over-riding loyalties to the World Organization? I reply that, on the contrary, it is probably the only means by which that organization will achieve its full stature and strength. There are already the special United States relations with Canada which I have just mentioned, and there are the special relations between the United States and the South American Republics. We British have our twenty years Treaty of Collaboration and Mutual Assistance with Soviet Russia. I agree with Mr. Bevin, the Foreign Secretary of Great Britain, that it might well be a fifty years Treaty so far as we are concerned. We aim at nothing but mutual assistance and collaboration. The British have an alliance with Portugal unbroken since 1384, and which produced fruitful results at critical moments in the late war. None of these clash with the general interest of a world agreement, or a world organization; on the contrary they help it. “In my father’s house are many mansions.”16 Special associations between members of the United Nations which have no aggressive point against any other country, which harbor no design incompatible with the Charter of the United Nations, far from being harmful, are beneficial and, as I believe, indispensable. I spoke earlier of the Temple of Peace. Workmen from all countries must build that temple. If two of the workmen know each other particularly well and are old friends, if their families are inter-mingled, and if they have “faith in each other’s purpose, hope in each other’s future and charity towards each other’s shortcomings” – to quote some good words I read here the other day – why cannot they work together at the common task as friends and partners? Why cannot they share their tools and thus increase each other’s working powers? Indeed they must do so or else the temple may not be built, or, being built, it may collapse, and we shall all be proved again unteachable and have to go and 16

John 14:2.

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try to learn again for a third time in a school of war, incomparably more rigorous than that from which we have just been released. The dark ages may return, the Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of science, and what might now shower immeasurable material blessings upon mankind, may even bring about its total destruction. Beware, I say; time may be short. Do not let us take the course of allowing events to drift along until it is too late. If there is to be a fraternal association of the kind I have described, with all the extra strength and security which both our countries can derive from it, let us make sure that that great fact is known to the world, and that it plays its part in steadying and stabilizing the foundations of peace. There is the path of wisdom. Prevention is better than cure. A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its Communist international organization intends to do in the immediate future, or what are the limits, if any, to their expansive and proselytizing tendencies. I have a strong admiration and regard for the valiant Russian people and for my wartime comrade, Marshal Stalin. There is deep sympathy and goodwill in Britain – and I doubt not here also – towards the peoples of all the Russias and a resolve to persevere through many differences and rebuffs in establishing lasting friendships. We understand the Russian need to be secure on her western frontiers by the removal of all possibility of German aggression. We welcome Russia to her rightful place among the leading nations of the world. We welcome her flag upon the seas. Above all, we welcome constant, frequent and growing contacts between the Russian people and our own people on both sides of the Atlantic. It is my duty however, for I am sure you would wish me to state the facts as I see them to you, to place before you certain facts about the present position in Europe. From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow. Athens alone – Greece with its immortal glories – is free to decide its future at an election under British, American and French observation. The Russian-dominated Polish Government has been encouraged to make enormous and wrongful inroads upon Germany, and mass expulsions of millions of Germans on a scale grievous and undreamed-of are now taking place. The Communist parties, which were very small in all these Eastern States of Europe, have been raised to pre-eminence and power far beyond their numbers and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control. Police governments are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except in Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy. Turkey and Persia are both profoundly alarmed and disturbed at the claims which are being made upon them and at the pressure being exerted by the Moscow Government. An attempt is being made by the Russians in Berlin to build up a quasi-Communist party in their zone of Occupied Germany by showing special favors to groups of left-wing German leaders. At the end of the fighting last June, the American and British Armies withdrew westwards, in accordance with an earlier agreement, to a depth at some points of 150 miles upon a front of nearly four hundred miles, in order to allow our Russian allies to occupy this vast expanse of territory which the Western Democracies had conquered. If now the Soviet Government tries, by separate action, to build up a pro-Communist Germany in their areas, this will cause new serious difficulties in the British and

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­ merican zones, and will give the defeated Germans the power of putting themselves A up to auction between the Soviets and the Western Democracies. Whatever conclusions may be drawn from these facts – and facts they are – this is certainly not the Liberated Europe we fought to build up. Nor is it one which contains the essentials of permanent peace. The safety of the world requires a new unity in Europe, from which no nation should be permanently outcast. It is from the quarrels of the strong parent races in Europe that the world wars we have witnessed, or which occurred in former times, have sprung. Twice in our own lifetime we have seen the United States, against their wishes and their traditions, against arguments, the force of which it is impossible not to comprehend, drawn by irresistible forces, into these wars in time to secure the victory of the good cause, but only after frightful slaughter and devastation had occurred. Twice the United States has had to send several millions of its young men across the Atlantic to find the war; but now war can find any nation, wherever it may dwell between dusk and dawn. Surely we should work with conscious purpose for a grand pacification of Europe, within the structure of the United Nations and in accordance with its Charter. That I feel is an open cause of policy of very great importance. In front of the iron curtain which lies across Europe are other causes for ­anxiety. In Italy the Communist Party is seriously hampered by having to support the Communist-trained Marshal Tito’s claims to former Italian territory at the head of the Adriatic. Nevertheless the future of Italy hangs in the balance. Again one cannot imagine a regenerated Europe without a strong France. All my public life I have worked for a strong France and I never lost faith in her destiny, even in the darkest hours. I will not lose faith now. However, in a great number of countries, far from the Russian frontiers and throughout the world, Communist fifth columns are established and work in complete unity and absolute obedience to the directions they receive from the Communist center. Except in the British Commonwealth and in the United States where Communism is in its infancy, the Communist parties or fifth columns constitute a growing challenge and peril to Christian civilization. These are somber facts for anyone to have to recite on the morrow of a victory gained by so much splendid comradeship in arms and in the cause of freedom and democracy; but we should be most unwise not to face them squarely while time remains. The outlook is also anxious in the Far East and especially in Manchuria. The Agreement which was made at Yalta, to which I was a party, was extremely favorable to Soviet Russia, but it was made at a time when no one could say that the German war might not extend all through the summer and autumn of 1945 and when the Japanese war was expected to last for a further 18 months from the end of the German war. In this country you are all so well-informed about the Far East, and such devoted friends of China, that I do not need to expatiate on the situation there. I have felt bound to portray the shadow which, alike in the west and in the east, falls upon the world. I was a high minister at the time of the Versailles Treaty and a close friend of Mr. Lloyd George, who was the head of the British delegation at Versailles. I did not myself agree with many things that were done, but I have a very strong impression in my mind of that situation, and I find it painful to contrast it with that which prevails now. In those days there were high hopes and unbounded confidence that the wars were over, and that the League of Nations would become all-powerful. I do not see or feel that same confidence or even the same hopes in the haggard world at the present time.

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On the other hand I repulse the idea that a new war is inevitable; still more that it is imminent. It is because I am sure that our fortunes are still in our own hands and that we hold the power to save the future, that I feel the duty to speak out now that I have the occasion and the opportunity to do so. I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines. But what we have to consider here today while time remains, is the permanent prevention of war and the establishment of conditions of freedom and democracy as rapidly as possible in all countries. Our difficulties and dangers will not be removed by closing our eyes to them. They will not be removed by mere waiting to see what happens; nor will they be removed by a policy of appeasement. What is needed is a settlement, and the longer this is delayed, the more difficult it will be and the greater our dangers will become. From what I have seen of our Russian friends and Allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness. For that reason the old doctrine of a balance of power is unsound. We cannot afford, if we can help it, to work on narrow margins, offering temptations to a trial of strength. If the Western Democracies stand together in strict adherence to the principles of the United Nations Charter, their influence for furthering those principles will be immense and no one is likely to molest them. If however they become divided or falter in their duty and if these all-important years are allowed to slip away, then indeed catastrophe may overwhelm us all. Last time I saw it all coming and cried aloud to my own fellow-countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention. Up till the year 1933 or even 1935, Germany might have been saved from the awful fate which has overtaken her and we might all have been spared the miseries Hitler let loose upon mankind. There never was a war in all history easier to prevent by timely action than the one which has just desolated such great areas of the globe. It could have been prevented in my belief without the firing of a single shot, and Germany might be powerful, prosperous and honored to-day; but no one would listen and one by one we were all sucked into the awful whirlpool. We surely must not let that happen again. This can only be achieved by reaching now, in 1946, a good understanding on all points with Russia under the general authority of the United Nations Organization and by the maintenance of that good understanding through many peaceful years, by the world instrument, supported by the whole strength of the English-speaking world and all its connections. There is the solution which I respectfully offer to you in this Address to which I have given the title “The Sinews of Peace.” Let no man underrate the abiding power of the British Empire and Commonwealth. Because you see the 46 millions in our island harassed about their food supply, of which they only grow one half, even in war-time, or because we have difficulty in restarting our industries and export trade after six years of passionate war effort, do not suppose that we shall not come through these dark years of privation as we have come through the glorious years of agony, or that half a century from now, you will not see 70 or 80 millions of Britons spread about the world and united in defense of our traditions, our way of life, and of the world causes which you and we espouse. If the population of the English-speaking Commonwealths be added to that of the United States with all that such co-operation implies in the air, on the sea, all over the globe and in science and in industry, and in moral force, there will be no quivering, precarious balance of power to offer its temptation to ambition or adventure. On the contrary, there will be an

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overwhelming assurance of security. If we adhere faithfully to the Charter of the United Nations and walk forward in sedate and sober strength seeking no one’s land or treasure, seeking to lay no arbitrary control upon the thoughts of men; if all British moral and material forces and convictions are joined with your own in fraternal association, the high-roads of the future will be clear, not only for us but for all, not only for our time, but for a century to come.

11.  Ronald Reagan, “Tear Down This Wall” (June 12, 1987) Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) gave the following public address at the Brandenburg Gate near the Berlin Wall in the course of his second term as President. Built by the Soviet-aligned government of East Germany in 1961, “the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart,” better known as the Berlin Wall, prevented East German citizens from access to the more prosperous and less restrictive Western portion of Berlin. After the fall of the wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Reagan’s speech would be remembered as one of the most powerful and evocative moments of his presidency.17 Chancellor Kohl, Governing Mayor Diepgen, Ladies and Gentlemen: Twenty-four years ago, President John F. Kennedy visited Berlin, speaking to the people of this city and the world at the City Hall. Well, since then two other presidents have come, each in his turn, to Berlin. And today I, myself, make my second visit to your city. We come to Berlin, we American presidents, because it’s our duty to speak, in this place, of freedom. But I must confess, we’re drawn here by other things as well: by the feeling of history in this city, more than 500 years older than our own nation; by the beauty of the Grunewald and the Tiergarten; most of all, by your courage and determination. Perhaps the composer Paul Lincke understood something about American presidents. You see, like so many presidents before me, I come here today because wherever I go, whatever I do: Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin [I still have a suitcase in Berlin]. Our gathering today is being broadcast throughout Western Europe and North America. I understand that it is being seen and heard as well in the East. To those listening throughout Eastern Europe, a special word: Although I cannot be with you, I address my remarks to you just as surely as to those standing here before me. For I join you, as I join your fellow countrymen in the West, in this firm, this unalterable belief: Es gibt nur ein Berlin [There is only one Berlin]. Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe. From the Baltic south, those barriers cut across Germany in a gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs, and guard towers. Farther south, there may be no visible, no obvious wall. But there remain armed guards and checkpoints all the same – still a restriction on the right to travel, still an instrument to impose upon ordinary men and women the will of a totalitarian 17

Source: Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, www.reaganfoundation.org/ media/128814/brandenburg.pdf.

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state. Yet it is here in Berlin where the wall emerges most clearly; here, cutting across your city, where the news photo and the television screen have imprinted this brutal division of a continent upon the mind of the world. Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar. President von Weizsacker has said, “The German question is open as long as the Brandenburg Gate is closed.” Today I say: As long as the gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind. Yet I do not come here to lament. For I find in Berlin a message of hope, even in the shadow of this wall, a message of triumph. In this season of spring in 1945, the people of Berlin emerged from their air-raid shelters to find devastation. Thousands of miles away, the people of the United States reached out to help. And in 1947 Secretary of State – as you’ve been told – George Marshall announced the creation of what would become known as the Marshall Plan. Speaking precisely 40 years ago this month, he said: “Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.” In the Reichstag a few moments ago, I saw a display commemorating this 40th anniversary of the Marshall Plan. I was struck by the sign on a burnt-out, gutted structure that was being rebuilt. I understand that Berliners of my own generation can remember seeing signs like it dotted throughout the western sectors of the city. The sign read simply: “The Marshall Plan is helping here to strengthen the free world.” A strong, free world in the West, that dream became real. Japan rose from ruin to become an economic giant. Italy, France, Belgium – virtually every nation in Western Europe saw political and economic rebirth; the European Community was founded. In West Germany and here in Berlin, there took place an economic miracle, the Wirtschaftswunder. Adenauer, Erhard, Reuter, and other leaders understood the practical importance of liberty – that just as truth can flourish only when the journalist is given freedom of speech, so prosperity can come about only when the farmer and businessman enjoy economic freedom. The German leaders reduced tariffs, expanded free trade, lowered taxes. From 1950 to 1960 alone, the standard of living in West Germany and Berlin doubled. Where four decades ago there was rubble, today in West Berlin there is the greatest industrial output of any city in Germany – busy office blocks, fine homes and apartments, proud avenues, and the spreading lawns of parkland. Where a city’s culture seemed to have been destroyed, today there are two great universities, orchestras and an opera, countless theaters, and museums. Where there was want, today there’s abundance – food, clothing, automobiles – the wonderful goods of the Ku’damm. From devastation, from utter ruin, you Berliners have, in freedom, rebuilt a city that once again ranks as one of the greatest on earth. The Soviets may have had other plans. But my friends, there were a few things the Soviets didn’t count on – Berliner Herz, Berliner Humor, ja, und Berliner Schnauze [Berliner heart, Berliner humor, yes, and a Berliner big mouth]. In the 1950s, Khrushchev predicted: “We will bury you.” But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind – too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there

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stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor. And now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom. We hear much from Moscow about a new policy of reform and openness. Some political prisoners have been released. Certain foreign news broadcasts are no longer being jammed. Some economic enterprises have been permitted to operate with greater freedom from state control. Are these the beginnings of profound changes in the Soviet state? Or are they token gestures, intended to raise false hopes in the West, or to strengthen the Soviet system without changing it? We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! I understand the fear of war and the pain of division that afflict this continent – and I pledge to you my country’s efforts to help overcome these burdens. To be sure, we in the West must resist Soviet expansion. So we must maintain defenses of unassailable strength. Yet we seek peace; so we must strive to reduce arms on both sides. Beginning ten years ago, the Soviets challenged the Western alliance with a grave new threat, hundreds of new and more deadly SS-20 nuclear missiles, capable of striking every capital in Europe. The Western alliance responded by committing itself to a counter-deployment unless the Soviets agreed to negotiate a better solution; namely, the elimination of such weapons on both sides. For many months, the Soviets refused to bargain in earnestness. As the alliance, in turn, prepared to go forward with its counter-deployment, there were difficult days – days of protests like those during my 1982 visit to this city – and the Soviets later walked away from the table. But through it all, the alliance held firm. And I invite those who protested then – I invite those who protest today – to mark this fact: Because we remained strong, the Soviets came back to the table. And because we remained strong, today we have within reach the possibility, not merely of limiting the growth of arms, but of eliminating, for the first time, an entire class of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth. As I speak, NATO ministers are meeting in Iceland to review the progress of our proposals for eliminating these weapons. At the talks in Geneva, we have also proposed deep cuts in strategic offensive weapons. And the Western allies have likewise made far-reaching proposals to reduce the danger of conventional war and to place a total ban on chemical weapons. While we pursue these arms reductions, I pledge to you that we will maintain the capacity to deter Soviet aggression at any level at which it might occur. And in cooperation with many of our allies, the United States is pursuing the Strategic Defense Initiative – research to base deterrence not on the threat of offensive retaliation, but on defenses that truly defend; on systems, in short, that will not target populations, but shield them. By these means we seek to increase the safety of Europe and all the world. But we must remember a crucial fact: East and West do not mistrust each other because we are armed; we are armed because we mistrust each other. And our differences are not about weapons but about liberty. When President Kennedy spoke at the City Hall

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those 24 years ago, freedom was encircled, Berlin was under siege. And today, despite all the pressures upon this city, Berlin stands secure in its liberty. And freedom itself is transforming the globe. In the Philippines, in South and Central America, democracy has been given a rebirth. Throughout the Pacific, free markets are working miracle after miracle of economic growth. In the industrialized nations, a technological revolution is taking place – a revolution marked by rapid, dramatic advances in computers and telecommunications. In Europe, only one nation and those it controls refuse to join the community of freedom. Yet in this age of redoubled economic growth, of information and innovation, the Soviet Union faces a choice: It must make fundamental changes, or it will become obsolete. Today thus represents a moment of hope. We in the West stand ready to cooperate with the East to promote true openness, to break down barriers that separate people, to create a safe, freer world. And surely there is no better place than Berlin, the meeting place of East and West, to make a start. Free people of Berlin: Today, as in the past, the United States stands for the strict observance and full implementation of all parts of the Four Power Agreement of 1971. Let us use this occasion, the 750th anniversary of this city, to usher in a new era, to seek a still fuller, richer life for the Berlin of the future. Together, let us maintain and develop the ties between the Federal Republic and the Western sectors of Berlin, which is permitted by the 1971 agreement. And I invite Mr. Gorbachev: Let us work to bring the Eastern and Western parts of the city closer together, so that all the inhabitants of all Berlin can enjoy the benefits that come with life in one of the great cities of the world. To open Berlin still further to all Europe, East and West, let us expand the vital air access to this city, finding ways of making commercial air service to Berlin more convenient, more comfortable, and more economical. We look to the day when West Berlin can become one of the chief aviation hubs in all central Europe. With our French and British partners, the United States is prepared to help bring international meetings to Berlin. It would be only fitting for Berlin to serve as the site of United Nations meetings, or world conferences on human rights and arms control or other issues that call for international cooperation. There is no better way to establish hope for the future than to enlighten young minds, and we would be honored to sponsor summer youth exchanges, cultural events, and other programs for young Berliners from the East. Our French and British friends, I’m certain, will do the same. And it’s my hope that an authority can be found in East Berlin to sponsor visits from young people of the Western sectors. One final proposal, one close to my heart: Sport represents a source of enjoyment and ennoblement, and you may have noted that the Republic of Korea – South Korea – has offered to permit certain events of the 1988 Olympics to take place in the North. International sports competitions of all kinds could take place in both parts of this city. And what better way to demonstrate to the world the openness of this city than to offer in some future year to hold the Olympic games here in Berlin, East and West? In these four decades, as I have said, you Berliners have built a great city. You’ve done so in spite of threats – the Soviet attempts to impose the East-mark, the blockade. Today the city thrives in spite of the challenges implicit in the very presence of this wall. What keeps you here? Certainly there’s a great deal to be said for your fortitude, for your defiant courage. But I believe there’s something deeper, something that involves Berlin’s whole look and feel and way of life – not mere sentiment. No one could live long in Berlin without being completely disabused of illusions. Something instead, that has seen the

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difficulties of life in Berlin but chose to accept them, that continues to build this good and proud city in contrast to a surrounding totalitarian presence that refuses to release human energies or aspirations. Something that speaks with a powerful voice of affirmation, that says yes to this city, yes to the future, yes to freedom. In a word, I would submit that what keeps you in Berlin is love – love both profound and abiding. Perhaps this gets to the root of the matter, to the most fundamental distinction of all between East and West. The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship. The totalitarian world finds even symbols of love and of worship an affront. Years ago, before the East Germans began rebuilding their churches, they erected a secular structure: the television tower at Alexander Platz. Virtually ever since, the authorities have been working to correct what they view as the tower’s one major flaw, treating the glass sphere at the top with paints and chemicals of every kind. Yet even today when the sun strikes that sphere – that sphere that towers over all Berlin – the light makes the sign of the cross. There in Berlin, like the city itself, symbols of love, symbols of worship, cannot be suppressed. As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German unity, I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: “This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.” Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom. And I would like, before I close, to say one word. I have read, and I have been questioned since I’ve been here about certain demonstrations against my coming. And I would like to say just one thing, and to those who demonstrate so. I wonder if they have ever asked themselves that if they should have the kind of government they apparently seek, no one would ever be able to do what they’re doing again. Thank you and God bless you all.

12.  Margaret Thatcher, Falklands War Speech (June 15, 1982) 18 Nicknamed “The Iron Lady,” Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) served as the British Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990. Ten weeks after Argentine forces had invaded the Falkland Islands, a British Overseas Territory, she gave the following speech to the House of Commons, announcing the British victory. In Argentina, the government’s surrender triggered protests that hastened the fall of the military dictatorship then in power. With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement on the Falkland Islands. Early this morning in Port Stanley, 74 days after the Falkland Islands were invaded, General Moore accepted from General Menendez the surrender of all the Argentine forces in East and West Falkland together with their arms and equipment. In a message to the Commander-in-Chief Fleet, General Moore reported: 18

Source: UK Parliament, https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1982/jun/15/ falkland-islands.

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“The Falkland Islands are once more under the Government desired by their inhabitants. God Save the Queen.” General Menendez has surrendered some 11,000 men in Port Stanley and some 2,000 in West Falkland. In addition, we had already captured and were holding elsewhere on the islands 1,800 prisoners, making in all some 15,000 prisoners of war now in our hands. The advance of our forces in the last few days is the culmination of a determined military effort to compel the Argentine Government to withdraw their forces from the Falkland Islands. On the night of Friday 11 June, men of 42 and 45 Commandos and the 3rd Battalion the Parachute Regiment, supported by elements of the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers, mounted an attack on Argentine positions on Mount Harriet, Two Sisters and Mount Longdon. They secured all their objectives, and during the next day consolidated their positions in the face of continuing resistance. I regret to inform the House that five Royal Marines, 18 Paratroopers and two Royal Engineers lost their lives in those engagements. Their families are being informed. Seventy-two Marines and Paratroopers were wounded. We have no details of Argentine casualties. Hundreds of prisoners and large quantities of equipment were taken in these operations. The land operations were supported by Harrier attacks and naval gunfire from ships of the task force which made a major contribution to the success of our troops. In the course of the bombardment, however, HMS “Glamorgan” was hit by enemy fire. We now know that 13 of the crew died in this attack or are missing. Throughout Sunday 13 June, the 3rd Commando Brigade maintained pressure on the enemy from its newly secured forward positions. Meanwhile, men of the 5th Infantry Brigade undertook reconnaissance missions in preparation for the next phase of the operations. HMS “Hermes” flew her one-thousandth Sea Harrier mission since leaving the United Kingdom. The Argentines mounted two air raids that day. The first was turned back by Harriers of the task force before it could reach the Falklands. In the second raid A4 aircraft made an unsuccessful bombing run and one Mirage aircraft was shot down. During the night of Sunday 13 June the second phase of the operations commenced. The 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment secured Wireless Ridge and the 2nd Battalion the Scots Guards took Tumbledown Mountain by first light on Monday 14 June. The 1st/7th Gurkhas advanced on Mount William, and the Welsh Guards on Sapper Hill. At 2 pm London time large numbers of Argentine troops were reported to be retreating from Mount William, Sapper Hill and Moody Brook in the direction of Port Stanley. British forces pressed forward to the outskirts of Port Stanley. Large numbers of Argentines threw down their weapons and surrendered. At 4 o’clock the Argentine garrison indicated its willingness to talk. Orders were given to our forces to fire only in self-defense. Shortly before 5 o’clock a white flag appeared over Port Stanley. Initial contact was made with the enemy by radio. By midnight General Moore and General Menendez were talking. The surrender of all the Argentine forces of East and West Falkland was agreed at 1 am today London time. Some of our forces are proceeding to West Falkland to organise the surrender of the Argentine forces there. We are now tackling urgently the immense practical problems of dealing with the Argentine prisoners on the islands. The weather conditions are severe, permanent accommodation is very limited, and much of the temporary accommodation which we

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had hoped to use was lost when the “Atlantic Conveyer” was sunk on 25 May. We have already repatriated to Argentina almost 1,400 prisoners, and the further 15,000 now in our custody are substantially more than we had expected. With the help of the International Red Cross, we are taking urgent steps to safeguard these prisoners and hope to evacuate them as soon as possible from the islands, in accordance with our responsibilities under the Geneva Convention. This is a formidable task. We have today sent to the Argentine Government, through the Swiss Government, a message seeking confirmation that Argentina, like Britain, considers all hostilities between us in the South Atlantic and not only on the Islands themselves to be at an end. It is important that this should be established with clarity and without delay. We must now bring life in the islands back to normal as quickly as possible, despite the difficult conditions and the onset of the Antarctic winter. Mines must be removed; the water supply in Stanley is not working and there will be other urgent tasks of repair and reconstruction. Mr. Rex Hunt and members of the Islands Council at present in this country will return as soon as possible. Mr. Hunt will concentrate on civilian matters. General Moore will be responsible for military matters. They will in effect act as civil and military commissioners and will, of course, work in the closest co-operation. After all that has been suffered it is too early to look much beyond the beginning of the return to normal life. In due course the islanders will be able to consider and express their views about the future. When the time is right we can discuss with them ways of giving their elected representatives an expanded role in the government of the islands. We shall uphold our commitment to the security of the islands; if necessary, we shall do this alone. But I do not exclude the possibility of associating other countries with their security. Our purpose is that the Falkland Islands should never again be a victim of unprovoked aggression. Recognising the need for economic development, I have asked Lord Shackleton to update his 1976 report on the economic potential of the islands. He has agreed to do this as a matter of urgency. I am most grateful to him. The House will join me, Mr. Speaker, in expressing our deep sense of loss over those who have died, and our sorrow for their families. The final details will not become clear for a few days yet, but we know that some 250 British Service men and civilians have been killed. They died that others may live in freedom and justice. The battle of the Falklands was a remarkable military operation, boldly planned, bravely executed, and brilliantly accomplished. We owe an enormous debt to the British forces and to the Merchant Marine. We honour them all. They have been supported by a people united in defence of our way of life and of our sovereign territory.

13.  George W. Bush, 9/11 Address to the American People (September 11, 2001) 19 George W. Bush (b. 1946), who served two terms as US President (2001–09), gave the following televised address on the evening of the day that had witnessed the single deadliest terrorist attack in American history. Using hijacked 19

Source: The White House, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/ 09/20010911-16.html.

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commercial jets, Al-Qaeda operatives targeted the World Trade Center in New York City, along with the Pentagon headquarters outside Washington DC. Another jet crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. The ensuing War on Terror would become a turning point in Bush’s presidency. Good evening. Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. The victims were in airplanes or in their offices – secretaries, businessmen and women, military and federal workers. Moms and dads. Friends and neighbors. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed. Our country is strong. A great people has been moved to defend a great nation. Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve. America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining. Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature, and we responded with the best of America, with the daring of our rescue workers, with the caring for strangers and neighbors who came to give blood and help in any way they could. Immediately following the first attack, I implemented our government’s emergency response plans. Our military is powerful, and it’s prepared. Our emergency teams are working in New York City and Washington, D.C., to help with local rescue efforts. Our first priority is to get help to those who have been injured and to take every precaution to protect our citizens at home and around the world from further attacks. The functions of our government continue without interruption. Federal agencies in Washington which had to be evacuated today are reopening for essential personnel tonight and will be open for business tomorrow. Our financial institutions remain strong, and the American economy will be open for business as well. The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts. I’ve directed the full resources for our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them. I appreciate so very much the members of Congress who have joined me in strongly condemning these attacks. And on behalf of the American people, I thank the many world leaders who have called to offer their condolences and assistance. America and our friends and allies join with all those who want peace and security in the world, and we stand together to win the war against terrorism. Tonight I ask for your prayers for all those who grieve, for the children whose worlds have been shattered, for all whose sense of safety and security has been threatened. And I pray they will be comforted by a power greater than any of us spoken through the ages in Psalm 23: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me.”

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This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day, yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world. Thank you. Good night and God bless America.

14.  George W. Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress (September 20, 2001) 20 President Bush addressed Congress in a joint session eleven days after the attacks of 9/11. A few days later, the US and its allies would attack Afghanistan after the Taliban refused to hand over Osama Bin Laden, the Al-Qaeda leader behind the attacks. Mr. Speaker, Mr. President Pro Tempore, Members of Congress, and Fellow Americans: In the normal course of events, presidents come to this chamber to report on the state of the union. Tonight, no such report is needed; it has already been delivered by the American people. We have seen it in the courage of passengers who rushed terrorists to save others on the ground. Passengers like an exceptional man named Todd Beamer. And would you please help me welcome his wife Lisa Beamer here tonight? We have seen the state of our union in the endurance of rescuers working past exhaustion. We’ve seen the unfurling of flags, the lighting of candles, the giving of blood, the saying of prayers in English, Hebrew and Arabic. We have seen the decency of a loving and giving people who have made the grief of strangers their own. My fellow citizens, for the last nine days, the entire world has seen for itself the state of our Union, and it is strong. Tonight, we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done. I thank the Congress for its leadership at such an important time. All of America was touched on the evening of the tragedy to see Republicans and Democrats joined together on the steps of this Capitol singing “God Bless America.” And you did more than sing. You acted, by delivering $40 billion to rebuild our communities and meet the needs of our military. Speaker Hastert, Minority Leader Gephardt, Majority Leader Daschle and Senator Lott, I thank you for your friendship, for your leadership and for your service to our country. And on behalf of the American people, I thank the world for its outpouring of support. America will never forget the sounds of our national anthem playing at Buckingham Palace, on the streets of Paris and at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.

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Source: The White House, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/ 09/20010920-8.html.

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We will not forget South Korean children gathering to pray outside our embassy in Seoul, or the prayers of sympathy offered at a mosque in Cairo. We will not forget moments of silence and days of mourning in Australia and Africa and Latin America. Nor will we forget the citizens of 80 other nations who died with our own. Dozens of Pakistanis, more than 130 Israelis, more than 250 citizens of India, men and women from El Salvador, Iran, Mexico and Japan, and hundreds of British citizens. America has no truer friend than Great Britain. Once again, we are joined together in a great cause. I’m so honored the British prime minister had crossed an ocean to show his unity with America. Thank you for coming, friend. On September the 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country. Americans have known wars, but for the past 136 years they have been wars on foreign soil, except for one Sunday in 1941. Americans have known the casualties of war, but not at the center of a great city on a peaceful morning. Americans have known surprise attacks, but never before on thousands of civilians. All of this was brought upon us in a single day, and night fell on a different world, a world where freedom itself is under attack. Americans have many questions tonight. Americans are asking, “Who attacked our country?” The evidence we have gathered all points to a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations known as al Qaeda. They are some of the murderers indicted for bombing American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and responsible for bombing the USS Cole. Al Qaeda is to terror what the Mafia is to crime. But its goal is not making money, its goal is remaking the world and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere. The terrorists practice a fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics; a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam. The terrorists’ directive commands them to kill Christians and Jews, to kill all Americans and make no distinctions among military and civilians, including women and children. This group and its leader, a person named Osama bin Laden, are linked to many other organizations in different countries, including the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. There are thousands of these terrorists in more than 60 countries. They are recruited from their own nations and neighborhoods and brought to camps in places like Afghanistan where they are trained in the tactics of terror. They are sent back to their homes or sent to hide in countries around the world to plot evil and destruction. The leadership of Al Qaeda has great influence in Afghanistan and supports the Taliban regime in controlling most of that country. In Afghanistan we see Al Qaeda’s vision for the world. Afghanistan’s people have been brutalized, many are starving and many have fled. Women are not allowed to attend school. You can be jailed for owning a television. Religion can be practiced only as their leaders dictate. A man can be jailed in Afghanistan if his beard is not long enough. The United States respects the people of Afghanistan – after all, we are currently its largest source of humanitarian aid – but we condemn the Taliban regime.

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It is not only repressing its own people, it is threatening people everywhere by sponsoring and sheltering and supplying terrorists. By aiding and abetting murder, the Taliban regime is committing murder. And tonight the United States of America makes the following demands on the Taliban. Deliver to United States authorities all of the leaders of Al Qaeda who hide in your land. Release all foreign nationals, including American citizens you have unjustly imprisoned. Protect foreign journalists, diplomats and aid workers in your country. Close immediately and permanently every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. And hand over every terrorist and every person and their support structure to appropriate authorities. Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps, so we can make sure they are no longer operating. These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion. The Taliban must act and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists or they will share in their fate. I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It’s practiced freely by many millions of Americans and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends. It is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them. Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated. Americans are asking “Why do they hate us?’” They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other. They want to overthrow existing governments in many Muslim countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. They want to drive Israel out of the Middle East. They want to drive Christians and Jews out of vast regions of Asia and Africa. These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends. They stand against us because we stand in their way. We’re not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They’re the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions, by abandoning every value except the will to power, they follow in the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way to where it ends in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies. Americans are asking, “How will we fight and win this war?’” We will direct every resource at our command – every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war – to the destruction and to the defeat of the global terror network.

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Now, this war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat. Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes visible on TV and covert operations secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. Our nation has been put on notice, we’re not immune from attack. We will take defensive measures against terrorism to protect Americans. Today, dozens of federal departments and agencies, as well as state and local governments, have responsibilities affecting homeland security. These efforts must be coordinated at the highest level. So tonight, I announce the creation of a Cabinet-level position reporting directly to me, the Office of Homeland Security. And tonight, I also announce a distinguished American to lead this effort, to strengthen American security: a military veteran, an effective governor, a true patriot, a trusted friend, Pennsylvania’s Tom Ridge. He will lead, oversee and coordinate a comprehensive national strategy to safeguard our country against terrorism and respond to any attacks that may come. These measures are essential. The only way to defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life is to stop it, eliminate it and destroy it where it grows. Many will be involved in this effort, from FBI agents, to intelligence operatives, to the reservists we have called to active duty. All deserve our thanks, and all have our prayers. And tonight a few miles from the damaged Pentagon, I have a message for our military: Be ready. I have called the armed forces to alert, and there is a reason. The hour is coming when America will act, and you will make us proud. This is not, however, just America’s fight. And what is at stake is not just America’s freedom. This is the world’s fight. This is civilization’s fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom. We ask every nation to join us. We will ask and we will need the help of police forces, intelligence service and banking systems around the world. The United States is grateful that many nations and many international organizations have already responded with sympathy and with support – nations from Latin America to Asia to Africa to Europe to the Islamic world. Perhaps the NATO charter reflects best the attitude of the world: An attack on one is an attack on all. The civilized world is rallying to America’s side. They understand that if this terror goes unpunished, their own cities, their own citizens may be next. Terror unanswered can not only bring down buildings, it can threaten the stability of legitimate governments.

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And you know what? We’re not going to allow it. Americans are asking, “What is expected of us?” I ask you to live your lives and hug your children. I know many citizens have fears tonight, and I ask you to be calm and resolute, even in the face of a continuing threat. I ask you to uphold the values of America and remember why so many have come here. We’re in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them. No one should be singled out for unfair treatment or unkind words because of their ethnic background or religious faith. I ask you to continue to support the victims of this tragedy with your contributions. Those who want to give can go to a central source of information, Libertyunites.org, to find the names of groups providing direct help in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia. The thousands of FBI agents who are now at work in this investigation may need your cooperation, and I ask you to give it. I ask for your patience with the delays and inconveniences that may accompany tighter security and for your patience in what will be a long struggle. I ask your continued participation and confidence in the American economy. Terrorists attacked a symbol of American prosperity; they did not touch its source. America is successful because of the hard work and creativity and enterprise of our people. These were the true strengths of our economy before September 11, and they are our strengths today. And finally, please continue praying for the victims of terror and their families, for those in uniform and for our great country. Prayer has comforted us in sorrow and will help strengthen us for the journey ahead. Tonight I thank my fellow Americans for what you have already done and for what you will do. And ladies and gentlemen of the Congress, I thank you, their representatives, for what you have already done and for what we will do together. Tonight we face new and sudden national challenges. We will come together to improve air safety, to dramatically expand the number of air marshals on domestic flights and take new measures to prevent hijacking. We will come together to promote stability and keep our airlines flying with direct assistance during this emergency. We will come together to give law enforcement the additional tools it needs to track down terror here at home. We will come together to strengthen our intelligence capabilities to know the plans of terrorists before they act and to find them before they strike. We will come together to take active steps that strengthen America’s economy and put our people back to work. Tonight, we welcome two leaders who embody the extraordinary spirit of all New Yorkers, Governor George Pataki and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. As a symbol of America’s resolve, my administration will work with Congress and these two leaders to show the world that we will rebuild New York City. After all that has just passed, all the lives taken and all the possibilities and hopes that died with them, it is natural to wonder if America’s future is one of fear. Some speak of an age of terror. I know there are struggles ahead and dangers to face. But this country will define our times, not be defined by them.

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As long as the United States of America is determined and strong, this will not be an age of terror. This will be an age of liberty here and across the world. Great harm has been done to us. We have suffered great loss. And in our grief and anger we have found our mission and our moment. Freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human freedom, the great achievement of our time and the great hope of every time, now depends on us. Our nation, this generation, will lift the dark threat of violence from our people and our future. We will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by our courage. We will not tire, we will not falter and we will not fail. It is my hope that in the months and years ahead life will return almost to normal. We’ll go back to our lives and routines and that is good. Even grief recedes with time and grace. But our resolve must not pass. Each of us will remember what happened that day and to whom it happened. We will remember the moment the news came, where we were and what we were doing. Some will remember an image of a fire or story or rescue. Some will carry memories of a face and a voice gone forever. And I will carry this. It is the police shield of a man named George Howard who died at the World Trade Center trying to save others. It was given to me by his mom, Arlene, as a proud memorial to her son. It is my reminder of lives that ended and a task that does not end. I will not forget the wound to our country and those who inflicted it. I will not yield, I will not rest, I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people. The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them. Fellow citizens, we’ll meet violence with patient justice, assured of the rightness of our cause and confident of the victories to come. In all that lies before us, may God grant us wisdom and may he watch over the United States of America. Thank you.

9 Tyrannies Left and Right

1.  Maximilien Robespierre, Address to the National Convention (excerpts) (February 5, 1794) 1 As the head of the Committee of Public Safety, Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (1758–94) oversaw one of the most radical phases of the French Revolution during the Reign of Terror (1793–94), involving many public executions and massacres of “the enemies of the Republic.” He gave the following address to the National Convention, the Revolutionary Parliament which had effectively delegated its power to Robespierre’s Committee. A forceful and prolific orator, Robespierre gave more than 900 speeches. His excesses eventually led to the rise of the “Thermidorian Reaction,” which had him and his supporters guillotined in July. Some time since we laid before you the principles of our exterior political system, we now come to develop the principles of political morality which are to govern the interior. After having long pursued the path which chance pointed out, carried away in a manner by the efforts of contending factions, the Representatives of the People at length acquired a character and produced a form of government. A sudden change in the success of the nation announced to Europe the regeneration which was operated in the national representation. But to this point of time, even now that I address you, it must be allowed that we have been impelled through the tempest of a revolution, rather by a love of right and a feeling of the wants of our country, than by an exact theory, and precise rules of conduct, which we had not even leisure to sketch. It is time to designate clearly the purposes of the revolution and the point which we wish to attain. It is time we should examine ourselves the obstacles which yet are between us and our wishes, and the means most proper to realize them: a consideration 1

Source: “Report Upon the Principles of Political Morality which are to Form the Basis of the Administration of the Interior Concerns of the Republic,” published by Benjamin Franklin Bache (Philadelphia, 1794). Translation modified.

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simple and important which appears not yet to have been contemplated. Indeed, how could a base and corrupt government have dared to view themselves in the mirror of political rectitude? A king, a proud senate, a Caesar, a Cromwell; of these the first care was to cover their dark designs under the cloak of religion, to covenant with every vice, caress every party, destroy men of probity, oppress and deceive the people in order to attain the end of their perfidious ambition. If we had not had a task of the first magnitude to accomplish; if all our concern had been to raise a party or create a new aristocracy, we might have believed, as certain writers more ignorant than wicked asserted, that the plan of the French revolution was to be found written in the works of Tacitus and of Machiavel; we might have sought the duties of the representatives of the people in the history of Augustus, of Tiberius, or of Vespasian, or even in that of certain French legislators; for tyrants are substantially alike and only differ by trifling shades of perfidy and cruelty. For our part we now come to make the whole world partake in your political secrets, in order that all friends of their country may rally at the voice of reason and public interest, and that the French nation and her representatives be respected in all countries which may attain a knowledge of their true principles; and that intriguers who always seek to supplant other intriguers may be judged by public opinion upon settled and plain principles. Every precaution must early be used to place the interests of freedom in the hands of truth, which is eternal, rather than in those of men, who change; so that if the government forgets the interests of the people or falls into the hands of men corrupted, according to the natural course of things, the light of acknowledged principles should unmask their treasons, and that every new faction may read its death in the very thought of a crime. Happy the people that attains this end; for, whatever new machinations are plotted against their liberty, what resources does not public reason present when guaranteeing freedom! What is the end of our revolution? The tranquil enjoyment of liberty and equality; the reign of that eternal justice, the laws of which are graven, not on marble or stone, but in the hearts of men, even in the heart of the slave who has forgotten them, and in that of the tyrant who disowns them. We wish that order of things where all the low and cruel passions are enchained, all the beneficent and generous passions awakened by the laws; where ambition subsists in a desire to deserve glory and serve the country; where distinctions grow out of the system of equality, where the citizen submits to the authority of the magistrate, the magistrate obeys that of the people, and the people are governed by a love of justice; where the country secures the comfort of each individual, and where each individual prides himself on the prosperity and glory of his country; where every soul expands by a free communication of republican sentiments, and by the necessity of deserving the esteem of a great people; where the arts serve to embellish that liberty which gives them value and support, and commerce is a source of public wealth and not merely of immense riches to a few individuals. We wish in our country that morality may be substituted for egotism, probity for false honour, principles for usages, duties for good manners, the empire of reason for the tyranny of fashion, a contempt of vice for a contempt of misfortune, pride for insolence, magnanimity for vanity, the love of glory for the love of money, good people for good company, merit for intrigue, genius for wit, truth for tinsel show, the attractions

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of happiness for the ennui of sensuality, the grandeur of man for the littleness of the great, a people magnanimous, powerful, happy, for a people amiable, frivolous and miserable; in a word, all the virtues and miracles of a republic instead of all the vices and absurdities of a Monarchy. We wish, in a word, to fulfill the intentions of nature and the destiny of man, realize the promises of philosophy, and acquit providence of a long reign of crime and tyranny. That France, once illustrious among enslaved nations, may, by eclipsing the glory of all free countries that ever existed, become a model to nations, a terror to oppressors, a consolation to the oppressed, an ornament of the universe and that, by sealing the work with our blood, we may witness at least the dawn of the bright day of universal happiness. This is our ambition – this is the end of our efforts. What kind of government can realize these prodigies? A democratic or republican government only; these two terms are synonymous notwithstanding the abuse of common language; for aristocracy is no more republic than monarchy is. A democracy is not where the people, always assembled, regulate public affairs themselves, much less is it where one hundred thousand portions of the people, by measures insulated, precipitate, and contradictory, should decide the fate of the whole nation; Such a government has never existed except to bring back the people under the yoke of despotism. A democratic government is that in which the sovereign people, guided by laws of their own enacting, do themselves all that they can do well, and by means of delegates all which they cannot do themselves. It is therefore in the principles of a democratic government that you are to seek the rules of your political conduct. But, in order to found and consolidate among us democracy, to reach the peaceful reign of constitutional laws, we must complete the war of liberty against tyranny, and weather successfully the tempests of the revolution: this is the end of the revolutionary government you have framed. You should therefore yet regulate your conduct by the tempestuous circumstances in which the Republic exists, and the plan of your administration should be the result of the spirit of the revolutionary government combined with the general principles of democracy. And what is the fundamental principle of a democratic or popular government; I mean, what is the primary spring which supports and gives it motion? It is virtue; I speak of public virtue, that which produced so many prodigies in Greece and Rome, and which ought to produce prodigies yet more wonderful in republican France; of that virtue which is nothing else than a love of country and its laws. But as equality is the essence of republicanism or democracy, it follows that the love of country necessarily includes the love of equality. Again, it is true that this sublime passion supposes a preference of the public interest over all private considerations; whence there results that the love of country supposes or produces all virtues; for what are they but a strength of mind which commands such sacrifices? And how could the slave of avarice and ambition, for example, immolate his idol to his country’s weal? Not only is virtue the soul of democracy, but it can exist in no other government. In a monarchy I know but one individual who can love his country, and who for this indeed needs no virtue; it is the monarch. The reason is that of all the inhabitants of his dominions the monarch alone has a country. Is he not sovereign at least in fact? Does he not assume the prerogative of the people? And what is our country but where we are citizens and partake in the sovereignty?

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By a natural consequence of this principle, in aristocratic governments the word ‘patrie’ [country] means nothing for any but the patrician families who usurp the sovereignty. It is only in democracies that all citizens find truly a country, and where that country can reckon as many zealous defenders of its cause as there are citizens. This is the source of the superiority of free peoples over all others. If Athens and Sparta triumphed over the tyrants of Asia, and the Swiss over the tyrants of Spain and Austria, this is the only cause. But the French are the first people in the world that have established democracy in its purity, by holding out to all men equality and a full enjoyment of the rights of the citizen; and this is, in my opinion, the true reason why all the tyrants leagued against the Republic will be vanquished. From this time great conclusions are to be drawn from the principles we have just laid down. Since virtue and equality are the soul of the Republic, and that your aim is to found, to consolidate the Republic, it follows, that the first rule of your political conduct should be to let all your measures tend to maintain equality and encourage virtue, for the first care of the legislator should be to strengthen the principles on which the government rests. Hence all that tends to excite a love of country, to purify manners, to exalt the mind, to direct the passions of the human heart towards the public good, you should adopt and establish. All that tends to concentrate and debase them into selfish egotism, to awaken an infatuation for pettiness, and a disregard for greatness, you should reject or repress. In the system of the French revolution that which is immoral is impolitic, and what tends to corrupt is counter-revolutionary. Weaknesses, vices, prejudices are the road to monarchy. Carried away, too often perhaps, by the force of ancient habits, as well as by the innate imperfection of human nature, to false ideas and pusillanimous sentiments, we have more to fear from the excesses of weakness, than from excesses of energy. The warmth of zeal is not perhaps the most dangerous rock that we have to avoid; but rather that languour which ease produces and a distrust of our own courage. Therefore continually wind up the sacred spring of republican government, instead of letting it run down. I need not say that I am not here justifying any excess. The most sacred principles may be abused; the wisdom of government should guide its operations according to circumstances, it should time its measures, choose its means; for the manner of bringing about great things is an essential part of the talent of producing them, just as wisdom is an essential attribute of virtue. We do not pretend to model the French Republic after that of Sparta; we neither wish to give it the austere manners nor the corruption of cloisters. We have just laid before you the moral and political principle of a popular government. You have then a compass to direct you in every tempest of the passions, and through the whirlwind of intrigues which surround you. You have the touch-stone which you can apply to all your laws and every proposition laid before you. By comparing them always with that principle you may henceforth avoid the rock on which large assemblies usually split, the danger of being taken by surprise and of precipitate, incoherent and contradictory measures. You can give to all your measures the systematic unity, wisdom, and dignity which should characterize the representatives of the first people upon the earth. It is not necessary to detail the natural consequences of the principle of democracy, it is the principle itself, simple yet copious, which deserves to be developed. Republican virtue may be considered as it respects the people and as it respects the government. It is necessary in both. When, however, the government alone lacks it,

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there exists a resource in that of the people; but when the people themselves are corrupted, liberty is already lost. Happily, virtue is natural in the people, despite aristocratic prejudices. A nation is truly corrupt, when, after having, by degrees lost its character and liberty, it slides from democracy into aristocracy or monarchy; this is the death of the political body by decrepitude. When, after four hundred years of glory, avarice had at length driven from Sparta the manners with the laws of Lycurgus, Agis dies in vain to restore them. Demosthenes in vain thundered eloquence against Philip, Philip found in the vices of degenerated Athens advocates more eloquent than Demosthenes. There is yet in Athens as great a population as in the time of Miltiades and Aristides; but there are no more Athenians. What does it matter that Brutus killed the tyrant? Tyranny yet lives in men’s hearts, and Rome no longer lives except in the name of Brutus. But, when, by prodigious effects of courage and of reason, a whole people break asunder the fetters of despotism to make of the fragments trophies to liberty; when, by their innate vigor, they rise in a manner from the arms of death, to resume all the strength of youth when, in turns forgiving and inexorable, intrepid and docile, they can neither be checked by impregnable ramparts, nor by innumerable armies of tyrants leagued against them, and yet of themselves stop at the voice of the law; if then they do not reach the heights of their destiny it can only be the fault of those who govern them. Again, it may be said, that to love justice and equality the people need no great effort of virtue; it is sufficient that they love themselves. But the magistrate is obliged to sacrifice his interest to that of the people, and the pride of office to equality. The law must speak with all its energy, especially to the organs of it. The power of the government must be felt by its agents to keep all parts of it in harmony with the law. If there is a representative body, a primary authority, constituted by the people, it is the duty of that body to superintend and repress continually all public functionaries. But what will keep it within proper bounds unless its own virtue? The more exalted this source of public order is, the more pure it ought to be. Then it is necessary that the representative body should begin by repressing in its bosom all private passions and interests, and listen only to the voice of public good. Happy the representatives, when their glory and even their interest attaches them, as much as a sense of their duty, to the cause of liberty. Let us deduce from all this one important truth; that the character of a popular government is to place all confidence in the people and be rigorous to itself. Here would the development of our theory stop, if you had only to pilot the vessel of the Republic in fair weather; but the tempest howls; and the revolutionary state in which we now are imposes another task. This severe purity of the principles of the French revolution, the sublimity indeed of its object, are what constitute our strength and our weakness; our strength as it gives us the ascendancy which truth will command over imposture, and the rights of the public interest over private interest; our weakness, because it gives scope to the machinations of bad men, of all those who wished that their former plundering should go unpunished, of all those who have abhorred liberty as a personal calamity, and those who have attached themselves to the revolution as to a trade and to the Republic as a rich prey. Hence the defection of so many ambitious and avaricious persons, who started with us in the revolution, but left us on the road, because they had not undertaken the journey to arrive at the same goal. It would appear as if the two opposite geniuses who have been imagined as disputing with each other the empire of nature, are combating

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in this great epoch of the human history to fix irrevocably the destiny of the world, and that France is the theatre of this important contest. Externally all despots surround you; internally all the friends of tyranny conspire; they will conspire until crime is deprived of all hope. It is necessary to annihilate both the internal and external enemies of the Republic or perish with its fall. Then, in this situation, your first political maxim should be that the people are guided by reason, the enemies of the people driven by terror alone. If virtue be the spring of a popular government in times of peace, the spring of that government during a revolution is virtue combined with terror: virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is only justice prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country. It has been said that terror is the spring of despotic government. Does yours then resemble despotism? Yes, as the steel that glistens in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles the sword with which the satellites of tyranny are armed. Let the despot govern by terror his debased subjects; he is right as a despot: conquer by terror the enemies of liberty and you will be right as founders of the Republic. The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny. Is force only intended to protect crime? Is it not the destiny of lightning to strike prideful heads? Nature imposes the law of self-preservation on every being whether physical or moral. Crime butchers innocence to secure a throne, and innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime. If tyranny reigned one single day not a patriot would survive it. How long yet will the madness of despots be called justice, and the justice of the people barbarity or rebellion? How tenderly oppressors and how severely the oppressed are treated! Nothing more natural: whoever does not abhor crime cannot love virtue. Yet one or the other must be crushed. Let mercy be shown the royalists exclaim some men. Mercy for the villains! No: be merciful to innocence, pardon the unfortunate, show compassion for human weakness. The protection of government is only due to peaceable citizens; and all citizens in the Republic are republicans. The royalists, the conspirators, are strangers, or rather enemies. Is not this dreadful contest, which liberty maintains against tyranny, indivisible? Are not the internal enemies the allies of those in the exterior? The assassins who lay waste the interior; the intriguers who purchase the consciences of the delegates of the people; the traitors who sell them; the mercenary libelists paid to dishonor the cause of the people, to smother public virtue, to fan the flame of civil discord, and bring about a political counter revolution by means of a moral one; all these men, are they less culpable or less dangerous than the tyrants whom they serve? All those who interpose their parricidal leniency between these villains and the avenging sword of national justice, are as culpable as those who would throw themselves between the satellites of tyrants and bayonets of our soldiers; all the transports of their false sensibility appear to me nothing but sighs for the success of England and Austria. But for whom should they show their sensibility? Should they feel for 200,000 heroes, the flower of the nation, mowed down by the sword of the enemies of liberty, or destroyed by the dagger of royalist or federalist assassins? Oh no, they were merely plebians, patriots. To have a right to their affectionate regard, it is necessary to have been at least the widow of a general who has twenty times betrayed his country; he who wishes to attract their attention, must almost prove that he has been the death of

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10,000 Frenchmen; as a Roman general, of old, if I recollect right, to obtain a triumph was obliged to show that he had killed 10,000 enemies. A narrative of the massacres committed by the tyrants on the defenders of liberty is heard with sangfroid: our women barbarously mutilated, our children murdered on the bosom of their mothers; our prisoners, expiating in the most cruel torments sublime and astonishing acts of heroism; and the tardy punishment of some monsters, fattened on the purest blood of their country, is called a horrid butchery. The misery of the female citizens, who have generously sacrificed their brothers, children, husbands in the best of causes, is patiently heard of; but the wives of conspirators receive those attentions which ought exclusively to be bestowed on the former. It is known that these can with impunity bias justice, plead against liberty the cause of their relations and their accomplices; they have been set up, in a manner, as a privileged corporation, creditor and pensioner of the people. What kindness we show in being duped by words! How aristocracy and modérantisme2 govern us yet by the dangerous maxims with which they have blinded us! Aristocracy defends itself by intrigue better than patriotism by its services. The revolution is being governed with quibbling befitting of a palace; conspiracies against the Republic are treated as the lawsuits of private persons. Tyranny kills and liberty pleads; and the code framed by the conspirators is the law by which they are judged. When public safety is at stake, the testimony of the universe is not admitted to supply the place of personal evidence, nor presumptive proof admitted when positive cannot be adduced. Delays in giving sentence produce the effect of impunity, the uncertainty of punishment encourages crimes, and yet the severity of punishment is complained of; the confinement of the enemies of the Republic is cried up as a grievance. Precedents are looked for in the history of tyrants, and that of the people lies neglected; neither are they drawn from the nature and imperiousness of circumstances when liberty is menaced. In Rome when the consul detected the conspiracy, and smothered it at the same time by the death of the accomplices of Catilina, he was accused of having violated accustomed forms. But by whom? By the ambitious Cesar, who wished to swell his party with the horde of conspirators; by the Pisos, the Clodiusses, and all those bad citizens, who themselves dreaded the virtue of a true Roman and severity of the laws. To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty. The severity of tyrants has barbarity for its principle; that of a republican government is founded on beneficence. Therefore woe to him who should dare to influence the people by that terror which is made only for their enemies! Woe to him who, confusing the inevitable errors of patriotism with the premeditated crimes of perfidiousness or the attempts of conspirators, permits the dangerous intriguer to escape and pursues the peaceable citizen! Death to the villain who dares abuse the sacred name of liberty or the powerful arms intended for her defense, to carry mourning or death to the patriotic heart! This abuse has existed, it is impossible to doubt it. It has no doubt been exaggerated by aristocracy; but were there in the whole Republic but one virtuous citizen persecuted by the enemies of liberty, the duty of the government would be to enquire with zeal and afford him a signal vengeance.

2

The faction led by Robespierre gave this name to their more moderate opponents, who included the Girondins and the Dantonists.

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But what conclusion is to be deduced from those persecutions which patriots have suffered through the hypocritical zeal of the counter-revolutionists, that liberty should be restored to these, and a wholesome system of severity relaxed? These new crimes of aristocracy are a proof of the necessity of that system. What do the daring attempts of our enemies prove except the too great lenity with which they have been pursued? They are caused in a great measure by the doctrine of mildness which has been lately preached to encourage them. If you could listen to such advice, your enemies would succeed in their attempts and receive, of your own hands, the price of their last crimes. What inconsistency there would be in regarding some victories achieved by patriotism as putting an end to all our dangers! Examine our real situation, and you will feel that vigilance and energy are more necessary than ever. A secret opposition clogs all the operations of the government: the fatal influence of foreign courts, though hidden, is nevertheless active and to be feared. It is evident that crime dismayed has only covered its operations with more care and cunning. The internal enemies of the French people are divided into two factions which form two armies. They march under different colors, by different roads; but to the same object, the disorganization of the popular government, the overthrow of the convention, that is, the triumph of tyranny. One of these factions endeavors to make us swerve to the side of a fatal weakness, the other drives us to excesses. This wishes to transform liberty into a bacchant, that into a prostitute. Inferior intriguers, often even good citizens misled, take one or the other side; but the chiefs of both belong to the cause of royalty and aristocracy, and co-operate against the patriots. Villains, even while at war with one another, hate each other less than they abhor all honest men. The country is their prey; they fight to divide it, but they are leagued against those who defend it. One faction has been called moderates; there is perhaps more fancy than truth in the name of ultra-revolutionist by which the others are distinguished. This name which can in no wise be applied to those who with good intentions are sometimes carried beyond the bounds of the wholesome policy of the revolution, by zeal or ignorance, does not characterize those perfidious beings in the pay of tyrants, whose task it is to throw an odium on the revolution by a false or exaggerated application of its sacred principles. The feigned revolutionist falls short of the principles of the revolution perhaps more often than he exceeds them. He is, however, now moderate, now revolutionary to madness, according to circumstances. In the Prussian, English, Austrian, and even Muscovite committees it is every day settled what he shall think the next day. He opposes energetic measures and executes them with exaggerated zeal when he has not been able to defeat them; severe against innocence, but indulgent to crime […] [Robespierre lists the betrayals of “feigned revolutionists.”] What difference is there between these and the moderates? They are servants of the same master, or, if you please, accomplices in villainy, who pretend to quarrel with each other the better to conceal their crimes. Judge them not by the difference of their professions, but by the identity in the result of their cabals. He who attacks the convention in violent declamations, and he that deceives to betray it, are they not agreed? […] To preach atheism is only one way of absolving superstition and accusing philosophy; and war declared against the deity is only a diversion in favor of royalty. What other means are there of combating liberty? Will the example of the first champions of aristocracy be followed, praising the sweets of slavery and the advantages of monarchy, the supernatural genius and the

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incomparable virtues of kings? Will the rights of man, and the eternal principles of justice be proclaimed as empty sounds? Will nobility and priestcraft be dragged from their graves, or will the right of the high burghers to enjoy the privileges of both orders be insisted on? No. It is more convenient to assume the mask of patriotism, to disfigure by disgraceful parodies the sublime drama of the revolution, to endanger the cause of liberty by a hypocritical moderation, or by studied extravagances. Hence aristocracy institutes popular societies; counter-revolutionary pride conceals under rags its plots and daggers; fanaticism overthrows its own altars, royalism chants the victories of the Republic; nobility, haunted by its recollection of lost influence, tenderly embraces equality to smother it; tyranny dyed with the blood of the defenders of liberty strews flowers on their tomb. If all hearts are not regenerated how many faces wear masks! How many traitors only meddle with our affairs to ruin them! Do you wish to put them to the proof? Require of them, instead of oaths and declamations, real services. Do we need to act? They then talk. Is deliberation proper? Then they wish immediately to act. Are the times peaceable? They oppose every useful change. Are the times tempestuous? They propose reforming everything, in order to throw all into confusion. […] Is it necessary to render the sovereignty of the people active and concentrate its strength by a firm and respectable government? They discover that the principles of the government are an infringement on the sovereignty of the people. Are the rights of the people to be pleaded against the oppression of government? They speak of nothing but respect for the laws and of the obedience due the constituted authorities. They have found an admirable expedient to second the efforts of the republican government; that is, completely to disorganize and degrade it, and to make war on all patriots who have contributed to our successes. Do you seek the means of feeding your armies, do you endeavor to wrest from avarice or timidity the provisions they hold and conceal? They very patriotically lament the public misfortunes and announce an approaching famine. The wish of averting evil is with them a means of increasing it. In the north fowls were killed, and a scarcity of eggs produced, under the pretext that fowls eat grain; – In the south it was proposed to destroy the mulberry and orange trees, under the pretext that silk is an article of luxury and oranges a superfluity. Imagination cannot picture all the excesses of which the hypocritical counter-revolutionists committed to stigmatize the cause of the Revolution. Would you believe it, that in those parts of the Republic where superstition had most votaries, besides accompanying religious worship with all the forms that could render it odious, terror was spread among the people by giving currency to a report that all children under 10 years of age and all persons above 70 were to be killed? And that this report has been spread particularly in the ci-devant province of Brittany, and in the departments of the Rhone and Mozelle? This is one of the crimes imputed to the ci-devant public accuser of the criminal tribunal of Strasburg. The tyrannical follies of this man render credible all that is told of Caligula and of Heliogabalus; and one can scarce believe them, though with a sight of the proofs. He carried his enormities so far as to put all women in a state of requisition for his use; it is even said that he made use of this mode to procure a wife. Whence sprung of a sudden this swarm of foreigners, of priests, nobles and intriguers of all kinds, who at the same moment spread over the territory of the Republic to execute, in the name of philosophy, the plan of a counter-revolution which could only be

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baffled by the energy of the public reason? Execrable plot, worthy of the genius of the foreign courts leagued against liberty, and of the corruption of all the internal enemies of the Republic! It is thus, that to the miracles constantly produced by the virtue of a great people, intrigue always mixes in the baseness of its criminal plots, baseness commanded by the tyrants, and which afterwards form the subject of their ridiculous manifestoes – all to keep their ignorant subjects in the mire of opprobrium and the chains of servitude. What relation is there between liberty and the crimes of its enemies? The sun, though obscured by a transient cloud, is he less the great vivifying principle of nature? Does the scum which the ocean throws on its shores diminish its grandeur? In perfidious hands all the remedies for our sufferings are rank poisons; all you can do, all you can say, they will turn it against you, even the truths which we have just now developed. They do all in their power to sow the seeds of civil war by a violent attack on all religious prejudices; they will even endeavor to turn the measures which a wholesome policy has dictated in favor of religious freedom into arms in the hands of fanaticism and aristocracy. If you had permitted the conspiracy to proceed, it would sooner or later have produced a dreadful and universal opposition to the progress of the revolution; if you check it, they will endeavor to make the best of it, and will preach that you endeavor to protect the priests and moderates. You must not even be astonished if those priests who have most openly confessed their religious quackery should be found the authors of this system. If the patriots, carried away by a warmth of an honest zeal, have at any time been dupes of their intrigues, they throw the blame on the patriots; for the first principle in their Machiavellian doctrine is to ruin the Republic by ruining the republicans, as a country is subjugated by the destruction of the army that defends it. Hence one of their favorite maxims may be understood, namely that the lives of men must be counted for nothing – a royal maxim which in reality means that all friends of liberty should be put in their power. It is to be observed that the fate of men who seek the public good only, is to be the victims of those who consult their own interest only, which proceeds from two causes: the first, that the intriguers attack with the vices of the ancient government; the second, that the patriots only defend themselves with the virtues of the new. This internal situation is worthy of all your attention, especially if you reflect that at the same time you have all the tyrants of Europe to combat, 1,200 thousand men under arms to support, and that the government is obliged to repair continually by great energy and vigilance all the evils which the innumerable multitude of our enemies has prepared for us, during the term of five years. What is the remedy to all these evils? We know of no other than a development of that grand spring of the Republic: virtue. Democracy suffers from two excesses, the aristocracy of the governors, or the contempt shown by the people to the authorities which they themselves have established, which contempt makes each assemblage of persons, or each individual the center of attraction to a portion of the public force, and brings back the people, through anarchy, to annihilation or despotism. The endeavors of the moderates or false revolutionists is to bandy us eternally between these two rocks. But the representatives of the people can avoid them both; for the government is capable of always remaining just and wise; and when these are its characteristics it is certain of the confidence of the people.

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It is very true that the aim of all our enemies is to dissolve the convention; it is true that the tyrant of Great Britain and his allies promise their parliament and their subjects to deprive you of your energy and the public confidence which you have deserved, and that this is the first lesson taught all their agents. But there is a political truth which should be kept in view, that a great body having the confidence of a great people can only be destroyed by its own misconduct; your enemies are convinced of this, and therefore do not doubt but they will endeavor to awaken among you all those passions which will back their evil designs. What can they do against the national representation unless they succeed in influencing the adoption of impolitic measures which may furnish pretexts for their criminal declamations? They must therefore necessarily wish to have two kinds of agents: one class seeking to degrade it by their calumnies, the others to compromise the glory and interests of the Republic by deceiving it even in its bosom. To attack it with success, it was politic to begin the war against the representatives in the departments which had shewn confidence in your measures, and also against the committee of public safety; they were therefore attacked by men who appeared to disagree among themselves. What could they undertake that would be more effective than to paralyze the government of the convention and destroy all its springs at a time when the fate of the Republic and of tyrants rested on its measures? Far from us be the idea, that there yet exists among us a man so vile as to wish to serve the cause of tyrants! But still farther from us be the crime, which could not be forgiven, of deceiving the National Convention and betraying the French people by a guilty silence! For it is much in favor of a free people that truth, while it is the bane of despots, is always the strength and salvation of the free. It is certain that there is yet one danger which our liberty has to run, the only danger perhaps to be feared: it is the plan which has existed of rallying all the enemies of the Republic by bringing into action a party spirit; of persecuting all patriots, discouraging and causing the ruin of the faithful agents of the republican government, to clog its operations. They wanted to deceive the convention upon persons and things; the convention has been misled as to the causes of the abuses, which are exaggerated in order to prevent the possibility of applying a remedy. Terror has been a weapon in the hands of their enemies to mislead or paralyze it; divisions are fomented; it is endeavored particularly to create divisions among the representatives sent to the departments and the committee of public safety; the first were to be induced to counteract the central authority, in order to lead to disorder and confusion; on their return it was endeavored to sour their minds, to render them the instruments of a faction. Foreigners make good use of all private passions, even of misled patriotism. At first a more direct road was intended to have been pursued, that of calumniating the committee of public safety; it was hoped they would be unable to bear the weight of their arduous duty. The victories and good fortune of the French people have been their shield. Since that time it has been attempted by praises to condemn them to inaction and destroy the fruits of their labors. All those vague declamations against the necessary agents of the committee, all the plans of disorganization disguised under the name of reforms, rejected by the Convention, and again brought forward now by foreign influence; the warmth with which the intrigues unmasked by the committee have been praised; the terror with which good citizens have been struck; the indulgence with which conspirators are treated – all that system of imposture and intrigue, of which

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the principal author is a man you expelled from among you, is directed against the National Convention and tends to realize the wishes of all the enemies of France. It is since the time when that system was announced in libelous writings, and was begun to be put in practice, that aristocracy and royalism have begun to raise their insolent heads, that patriotism has again been persecuted in a portion of the Republic, that the national authority experienced a resistance, of which intriguers had begun to lose the habit. Indeed, if these indirect attacks had had no other inconvenience than to divide the attention and energy of those who have borne the important burden which you have laid on them, and to draw off their attention from the important measures of public safety, in order to counteract dangerous intrigues, even then they might be considered a useful diversion for our enemies. Let us keep courage, for this is the sanctuary of truth; here sit the founders of the Republic, the avengers of humanity, the destroyers of tyrants. Here, to destroy an abuse it is sufficient to point it out. It is enough for us to appeal – in the name of our country, of the counsels of self-love or the weakness of individuals – to the virtue and glory of the National Convention. We call for a solemn discussion upon all the subjects of the Convention’s worries, and on all that can impede the progress of the revolution. We entreat that no private interest or secret motive be permitted here to usurp the place of the general will of the assembly or the eternal power of reason. We shall content ourselves this day with proposing that you should consecrate with your formal approbation the moral and political truths on which your internal administrations and the stability of the Republic must be founded, just as you have already sanctioned the principles of your conduct towards foreign nations. Thus you will rally all good citizens, you will deprive conspirators of all hope; you will give unity to your measures and will confound the intrigues and calumnies of kings; you will do honor to your cause and your character in the eyes of all peoples. Give to the French people this new pledge of your zeal in protecting patriotism, of your inflexible justice towards the guilty and of your devotion to the cause of the people. Order that the principles of political morality which we have just developed be proclaimed, in your name, within and without the bounds of the Republic.

2.  Vladimir Lenin, “Thesis and Report on Bourgeois Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” (excerpts) (March 4, 1919) 3 Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870–1924), the Marxist revolutionary and leader of the Bolsheviks, gave the following speech after the Russian Revolution had deposed the Tsarist monarchy and before defeating his enemies in the ongoing civil war. His victory culminated in the establishment of a Communist dictatorship that would, in various forms, rule Russia and its satellite states until 1991. The speech is a defense of a dictatorship under Lenin against demands for democracy. 3

Vladimir Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 28, ed. and trans. Jim Riordan (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965), 457–74.

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Faced with the growth of the revolutionary workers’ movement in every country, the bourgeoisie and their agents in the workers’ organizations are making desperate attempts to find ideological and political arguments in defense of the rule of the exploiters. Condemnation of dictatorship and a sense of democracy are particularly prominent among these arguments. The falsity and hypocrisy of this argument, repeated in a thousand strains by the capitalist press and at the Berne yellow International Conference in February 1919, are obvious to all who refuse to betray the fundamental principles of socialism. Firstly, this argument employs the concepts of “democracy in general” and “dictatorship in general” without posing the question of the class concerned. This non-class or above-class presentation, which supposedly is popular, is an outright travesty of the basic tenet of socialism, namely, its theory of class struggle, which Socialists who have sided with the bourgeoisie recognize in words but disregard in practice. For in no civilized capitalist country does “democracy in general” exist; all that exists is bourgeois democracy, and it is not a question of “dictatorship in general,” but of the dictatorship of the oppressed class, i.e., the proletariat, over its oppressors and exploiters, i.e., the bourgeoisie, in order to overcome the resistance offered by the exploiters in their fight to maintain their domination. History teaches us that no oppressed class ever did, or could, achieve power without going through a period of dictatorship, i.e., the conquest of political power and forceable suppression of the resistance always offered by the exploiters – the resistance that is most desperate, most furious, and that stops at nothing. The bourgeoisie, whose domination is now defended by the Socialists who denounce “dictatorship in general” and extol “democracy in general,” won power in the advanced countries through a series of insurrections, civil wars, and the forcible suppression of kings, feudal lords, slaveowners and their attempts at restoration. In books, pamphlets, Congress resolutions, and propaganda speeches, Socialists have everywhere thousands and millions of times explained to people the class nature of these bourgeois revolutions and this bourgeois dictatorship. That is why the present defense of bourgeois democracy under the cover of talk about “democracy in general,” and the present howls and shouts against proletarian dictatorship under the cover of shouts about “dictatorship in general” are an outright betrayal of socialism. They are, in fact, desertion to the bourgeoisie, denial of the proletariat’s right to its own, proletarian revolution, and a defense of bourgeois reformism at the very historical juncture when bourgeois reformism throughout the world has collapsed and the war has created a revolutionary situation. In explaining the class nature of bourgeois civilization, bourgeois democracy and the bourgeois parliamentary system, all Socialists have expressed the idea formulated with the greatest scientific precision by Marx and Engels,4 namely, that the most democratic bourgeois republic is no more than a machine for the suppression of the working class by the bourgeoisie, for the suppression of the working people by a handful of capitalists. There is not a single revolutionary, not a single Marxist among those now shouting against dictatorship and for democracy, who has not sworn and vowed to the workers that he accepts this basic truth of socialism. But now, when the revolutionary proletariat is in a fighting mood and taking action to destroy this machine of oppression and to establish proletarian dictatorship, these traitors to socialism claim that the bourgeoisie 4

Fredrick Engels, “Introduction” to Karl Marx, The Civil War in France.

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have granted the working people “pure democracy,” have abandoned resistance and are prepared to yield to the majority of the working people. They assert that in a democratic republic there is not, and never has been, any such thing as a state machine for the suppression of labor by capital. The Paris Commune – to which all who parade as Socialists pay lip service (for they know that the workers ardently and sincerely sympathize with the Commune) – showed very clearly the historically conventional nature and limited value of the bourgeois parliamentary system and bourgeois democracy; institutions which, though highly progressive compared with medieval times, inevitably require a radical alteration in the era of proletarian revolution. It was Marx who best appraised the historical significance of the Commune. In his analysis, he revealed the exploiting nature of bourgeois democracy in the bourgeois parliamentary system under which the oppressed classes enjoy the right to decide once in several years which representative of the propertied classes shall “represent and suppress” (ver- und zertreten) the people in parliament. And it is now, when the Soviet movement is embracing the entire world and continuing the work of the Commune for all to see, that the traitors to socialism are forgetting the concrete experience and concrete lessons of the Paris Commune and repeating the old bourgeois rubbish about “democracy in general.” The Commune was not a parliamentary institution. The significance of the commune, furthermore, lies in the fact that it endeavored to crush, to smash to its very foundations, the bourgeois state apparatus, the bureaucratic, judicial, military and police machine, and to replace it by a self-governing, mass workers’ organization in which there was no division between legislative and executive power. All contemporary bourgeois-democratic republics, including the German republic – which the traitors to socialism, in mockery of the truth, describe as a proletarian republic – retain this state apparatus. We therefore again get quite clear confirmation of the point that shouting in defense of “democracy in general” is actually defense of the bourgeoisie and their privileges as exploiters. “Freedom of assembly” can be taken as a sample of the requisites of “pure democracy”. Every class-conscious worker who has not broken with his class will readily appreciate the absurdity of promising freedom of assembly to the exploiters at a time and in a situation when the exploiters are resisting the overthrow of their rule and are fighting to retain their privileges. When the bourgeoisie were revolutionary, they did not, neither in England in 1649 nor in France in 1793, grant “freedom of assembly” to the monarchists and nobles, who summoned foreign troops and “assembled” to organize attempts at restoration. If the present-day bourgeoisie, who have long since become reactionary, demand from the proletariat advance guarantees of “freedom of assembly” for the exploiters, whatever the resistance offered by the capitalists to being expropriated, the workers will only laugh at their hypocrisy. The workers know perfectly well, too, that even in the most democratic bourgeois republic “freedom of assembly” is a hollow phrase, for the rich have the best public and private buildings at their disposal, and enough leisure to assemble at meetings, which are protected by the bourgeois machine of power. The rural and urban workers and small peasants – the overwhelming majority of the population – are denied all these things. As long as that state of affairs prevails, “equality,” i.e., “pure democracy,” is a fraud. The first thing to do to win genuine equality and enable the working people to enjoy democracy in practice is to deprive the exploiters of all the public and sumptuous private buildings, to give to the working people leisure and to see to it that their

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freedom of assembly is protected by armed workers, not by heirs of the nobility or capitalist officers in command of downtrodden soldiers. Only when that change is effected can we speak of freedom of assembly and of equality without mocking at the workers, at working people in general, at the poor. And this change can be effected only by the vanguard of the working people, the proletariat, which overthrows the exploiters, the bourgeoisie. “Freedom of the press” is another of the principal slogans of “pure democracy.” And here, too, the workers know – and Socialists everywhere have explained millions of times – that this freedom is a deception whenever the best printing presses and the biggest stocks of paper are appropriated by the capitalists, whenever capitalist rule over the press remains. This rule is manifested throughout the world all the more strikingly, sharply, and cynically the more that democracy and the republican system are developed – as in America, for example. The first thing to do to win real equality and genuine democracy for the working people, for the workers and peasants, is to deprive capital of the possibility of hiring writers, buying publishing houses, and bribing newspapers. And to do that, the capitalists and exploiters have to be overthrown and their resistance oppressed. The capitalists have always used the term “freedom” to mean freedom for the rich to get richer and for the workers to starve to death. In capitalist usage, freedom of the press means freedom of the rich to bribe the press, freedom to use their wealth to shape and fabricate so-called public opinion. In this respect, too, the defenders of “pure democracy” prove to be defenders of an utterly foul and venal system that gives the rich control over the mass media. They prove to be deceivers of the people, who, with the aid of plausible, fine-sounding, but thoroughly false phrases, divert them from the concrete historical task of liberating the press from capitalist enslavement. Genuine freedom and equality will be embodied in the system which the Communists are building, and in which there will be no opportunity for massing wealth at the expense of others, no objective opportunities for putting the press under the direct or indirect power of money, and no impediments in the way of any workingman (or groups of workingmen, in any numbers) for enjoying and practicing equal rights in the use of public printing presses and public stocks of paper. […] The history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries demonstrated, even before the war, what that often-celebrated “pure democracy” really is under capitalism. Marxists have always maintained that the more developed, the “purer” democracy is, the more naked, acute, and merciless the class struggle becomes, and the “purer” the capitalist oppression and bourgeois dictatorship. The Dreyfus case in republican France, the massacre of strikers by hired bands armed by the capitalists in the free and democratic American republic – these and thousands of similar facts illustrate the truth which the bourgeoisie are mainly seeking to conceal, namely, that actually terror and bourgeois dictatorship prevail in the most democratic of republics and are openly displayed every time the exploiters think the power of capital is being shaken. The imperialist war of 1914–18 conclusively revealed even to backward workers the true nature of bourgeois democracy, even in the freest republics, as being a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Tens of millions were killed for the sake of enriching the German or the British group of millionaires and multimillionaires, and bourgeois military dictatorships were established in the freest republics. This military dictatorship continues to exist in the Allied countries even after Germany’s defeat. It was mostly the war that opened the eyes of the working people, that stripped bourgeois democracy of its camouflage and showed the people the abyss of speculation and profiteering that existed

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because of the war. It was in the name of “freedom and equality” that the bourgeoisie wage the war, in the name of “freedom and equality” that the munitions manufacturers piled up fabulous fortunes. Nothing that the yellow Berne International does can conceal from the people the now thoroughly exposed exploiting character of bourgeois freedom, bourgeois equality and bourgeois democracy. In Germany, the most developed capitalist country of Continental Europe, the very first months of full Republican freedom, established as a result of imperialist Germany’s defeat, have shown the German workers and the whole world the true class substance of the bourgeois-democratic republic. The murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg is an event of epoch-making significance not only because of the tragic death of these finest people and leaders of the truly proletarian Communist International, but also because the class nature of an advanced European state – it can be said without exaggeration, of an advanced state, on a worldwide scale – has been conclusively exposed. If those arrested, i.e., those placed under state protection, could be assassinated by officers and capitalists with impunity, and this under the government headed by social patriots, then the democratic republic where such a thing was possible is a bourgeois dictatorship. Those who voice their indignation at the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg but fail to understand this fact are only demonstrating their stupidity, or hypocrisy. “Freedom” in the German republic, one of the freest and advanced republics of the world, is freedom to murder arrested leaders of the proletariat with impunity. Nor can it be otherwise as long as capitalism remains, for the development of democracy sharpens rather than dampens the class struggle which, by virtue of all the results and influences of the war and of its consequences, has been brought to a boiling point. Throughout the civilized world we see Bolsheviks being exiled, persecuted, and thrown into prison. This is the case, for example, in Switzerland, one of the freest bourgeois republics, and in America, where there have been anti-Bolshevik pogroms. From the standpoint of “democracy in general” or “pure democracy,” it is really ridiculous that advanced, civilized, and democratic countries, which are armed to the teeth, should fear the presence of a few score men from backward, famine-stricken and ruined Russia, which the bourgeois papers, in tens of millions of copies, describe as savage, criminal, etc. Clearly, the social situation that could produce this crying contradiction is in fact a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. In these circumstances, proletarian dictatorship is not only an absolutely legitimate means of overthrowing exploiters and suppressing the resistance, but also absolutely necessary to the entire mass of working people, being their only defense against the bourgeois dictatorship which led to the war and is preparing new wars. The main thing that Socialists fail to understand – which constitutes their shortsightedness in matters of theory, their subservience to bourgeois prejudices, and their political betrayal of the proletariat – is that in capitalist society, whenever there is any serious aggravation of the class struggle intrinsic to that society, there can be no alternative but the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of the proletariat. Dreams of some third way are reactionary, petty-bourgeois limitations. That is borne out by more than a century of development of bourgeois democracy in the working-class movement in all the advanced countries, and notably by the experience of the past five years. This is also borne out by the whole science of political economy, by the entire content of Marxism, which reveals the economic inevitability, wherever commodity economy prevails, of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie that can only be replaced by the class which

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the very growth of capitalism develops, multiplies, welds together and strengthens; that is, the proletarian class. Another theoretical and political error of the Socialists is their failure to understand that ever since the rudiments of democracy first appeared in antiquity, its forms inevitably changed over the centuries as one ruling class replaced another. Democracy assumed different forms and was applied in different degrees in the ancient republics of Greece, the medieval cities, and the advanced capitalist countries. It would be sheer nonsense to think that the most profound revolution in human history, the first case in the world of power being transferred from the exploiting minority to the exploited majority, could take place within the time-worn framework of the old, bourgeois, parliamentary democracy, without drastic changes, without the creation of new forms of democracy, new institutions that embody the new conditions for applying democracy, etc. Proletarian dictatorship is similar to dictatorship of other classes in that it arises out of the need, as every other dictatorship does, to forcibly suppress the resistance of the class that is losing its political sway. The fundamental distinction between the dictatorship of the proletariat and a dictatorship of the other classes – landlord dictatorship in the Middle Ages and bourgeois dictatorship in all civilized capitalist countries – consists in the fact that the dictatorship of landowners and bourgeoisie was a forcible suppression of the resistance offered by the vast majority of the population, namely, the working people. In contrast, proletarian dictatorship is a forcible suppression of the resistance of the exploiters, i.e., of an insignificant minority of the population: the landlords and capitalists. It follows that proletarian dictatorship must inevitably entail not only a change in the democratic forms and institutions, generally speaking, but precisely such change as provides an unparalleled extension of the actual enjoyment of democracy by those oppressed by capitalism – the toiling classes. And indeed, the form of proletarian dictatorship that has already taken shape – e.g., Soviet power in Russia, the Räte-System in Germany, the Shop Stewards Committees in Britain and similar Soviet institutions in other countries – all this implies and presents to the toiling classes, to the vast majority of the population, greater practical opportunities for enjoying democratic rights and liberties than ever existed before, even approximately, in the best and the most democratic bourgeois republics. The substance of Soviet government is that the permanent and only foundation of state power, the entire machinery of state, is the mass scale organization of the classes oppressed by capitalism, i.e., the workers and semi-proletarians (peasants who do not exploit the labor of others and regularly resort to the sale of at least a part of their own labor power). It is the people, who even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, while possessing equal rights by law, have in fact been debarred by thousands of devices and subterfuges from participation in political life and enjoyment of democratic rights and liberties, that are now drawn into constant, unfailing, and decisive participation in the democratic administration of the state. The equality of citizens, irrespective of sex, religion, race, or nationality, which bourgeois democracy everywhere has always promised but never effected, and never could effect because of the domination of capital, is given immediate and full effect by the Soviet system, or dictatorship of the proletariat. The fact is that this can only be done by a government of the workers, who are not interested in the means of production being privately owned and in the fight for their division and redivision.

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The old, i.e., bourgeois, democracy and the parliamentary system were so organized that it was the mass of working people who were kept farthest away from a machinery of government. Soviet power, i.e., the dictatorship of the proletariat, on the other hand, is so organized as to bring the working people close to the machinery of government. That, too, is the purpose of combining the legislative and executive authority under the Soviet organization of the state and of replacing territorial constituencies by production units – the factory. The army was a machine of oppression not only under the monarchy. It remains as such in all bourgeois republics, even the most democratic ones. Only the Soviets, the permanent organizations of government authority of the classes that were oppressed by capitalism, are in a position to destroy the army’s subordination to bourgeois commanders and really merge the proletariat with the army; only the Soviets can effectively arm the proletariat and disarm the bourgeoisie. Unless this is done, the victory of socialism is impossible. The Soviet organization of the state is suited to the leading role of the proletariat as a class most concentrated and enlightened by capitalism. The experience of all revolutions and all movements of the oppressed classes – the experience of the world Socialist movement – teaches us that only the proletariat is in a position to unite and lead the scattered and backward sections of the working and exploited population. Only the Soviet government of the state can really effect the immediate breakup and total destruction of the old, i.e., bourgeois, bureaucratic and judicial machinery, which has been, and has inevitably had to be, retained under capitalism even in the most democratic republics, and which is, in actual fact, the greatest obstacle to the practical implementation of democracy for the workers and working people generally. The Paris Commune took the first epoch-making step along this path. The Soviet system has taken the second. Destruction of state power is the aim set by all Socialists, including Marx above all. Genuine democracy, i.e., liberty and equality, is unrealizable unless this aim is achieved. But its practical achievement is possible only through Soviet, or proletarian, democracy, for by enlisting the mass organizations of the working people in constant and unfailing participation in the administration of the state, it immediately begins to prepare the complete withering away of any state. […]

3.  Joseph Goebbels, “Our Hitler” (April 19, 1933) 5 Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945), one of Hitler’s closest confidants and the Reich Minister of Propaganda (1933–45), gave the following radio address to mark the Führer’s birthday, a month after Hitler had been made Chancellor. He went on to give similar radio addresses on the eve of Hitler’s birthday every year from 1935 to 1945. Radio formed a key part of Goebbels’ propaganda machinery: he made sure that the Volksempfänger, “the people’s receiver,” was unable to tune in to foreign stations and cheap enough to be found in 5

Source: German Propaganda Archive, ed. and trans. Randall Bytwerk (1998), https://research .calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/unser33.htm. Reprinted with permission of the translator.

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every German household. With the aid of such technology, Goebbels cultivated an almost religious attachment to the personality of Hitler. The newspapers today are filled with congratulations for Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler. The nuances vary, depending on the tone, character, and attitude of the newspaper. All, however, agree on one thing: Hitler is a man of stature who has already accomplished historically important deeds and faces still greater challenges. He is the kind of statesman found only rarely in Germany. During his lifetime he has had the good fortune not only to be appreciated and loved by the overwhelming majority of the German people, but even more importantly to be understood by them. He is the only German politician of the post-war period who understood the situation and drew the necessary hard and firm conclusions. All the newspapers agree on this. It no longer needs to be said that he has taken up Bismarck’s work and intends to complete it. There is enough proof of this even for those who do not believe, or who think ill of him. I therefore do not think it necessary for me to discuss the historical significance and still unknown impact of this man on the eve of the day on which, far from the bustle of the Reich capital, Adolf Hitler completes his 44th year. I feel a much deeper need to personally express my esteem for him, and in doing so I believe that I am speaking for many hundreds of thousands of National Socialists throughout the country. We shall leave it to those who were our enemies only a few months ago, and who then slandered him, to praise him today with awkward words and embarrassing pathos. We know how little Adolf Hitler appreciates such attempts, and how much more the devoted loyalty and lasting support of his friends and fellow fighters corresponds to his nature. The mysterious magic that he exerts on all who come in contact with him cannot alone explain his historic personality. There is more that makes us love and esteem him. Through all the ups and downs of Adolf Hitler’s career, from the beginning of his political activity to the crowning of his career as he seized power, he has always remained the same: a person among people, a friend to his comrades, an eager supporter of every ability and talent. He is a pathfinder for those who devoted themselves to his idea, a man who conquered the hearts of his comrades in the midst of battle and never released them. It seems to me that one thing has to be said in the midst of the profusion of feelings. Only a few know Hitler well. Most of the millions who look to him with faithful trust do so from a distance. He has become to them a symbol of their faith in the future. Normally the great men that we admire from a distance lose their magic when one knows them well. With Hitler the opposite is true. The longer one knows him the more one admires him, and the more one is ready to give oneself fully to his cause. We will let others blow the trumpets. His friends and comrades gather round him to shake his hand and thank him for everything that he is to us, and that he has given to us. Let me say it once more: We love this man and we know that he has earned all of our love and support. Never was a man more unjustly accused by the hate and slanders of his ill-wishers of other parties. Remember what they said about him! A mishmash of contradictory accusations! They did not fail to accuse him of every sin, to deny him every virtue. When he nonetheless overcame in the end the flood of lies, triumphing over his enemies and raising the National Socialist flag over Germany, fate showed its favor toward him to the entire world. It raised him from the mass of people and put him in the place he deserved because of his brilliant gifts and his pure and flawless humanity.

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I remember the years when – just released from prison – he began to rebuild his party. We passed a few wonderful vacation days with him on his beloved Obersalzberg high above Berchtesgaden. Below us was the quiet cemetery where his unforgettable friend Dietrich Eckart is buried. We walked through the mountains, discussed plans for the future, and talked about theories that today have long since become reality. He then sent me to Berlin. He gave me a difficult and challenging task, and I still thank him today that he gave me the job. A few months later we sat in a room in a small Berlin hotel. The party had just been banned by the Marxist-Jewish police department. Heavy blows were falling on it. The party was full of discouragement, bickering and quarreling. Everyone was complaining about everyone else. The whole organization seemed to have given up. Hitler, however, did not lose courage, but immediately began to organize a defense and helped out where he was needed. Although he had his own personal and political difficulties, he found the time and strength to deal with the problems and support his friends in the Reich capital. One of his fine and noble traits is that he never gives up on someone who has won his confidence. The more his political opponents attack such a person, the more loyal is Adolf Hitler’s support. He is not the kind of person who is afraid of strong associates. The harder and tougher a man is, the more Hitler likes him. If things fall apart, his capable hands put them together again. Who would have thought it possible that a mass organization that includes literally everything could be built in this nation of individualists? That is Hitler’s great accomplishment. His principles are firm and unshakable, but he is generous and understanding toward human weaknesses. He is a pitiless enemy of his opponents, but a good and warm-hearted friend to his comrades. That is Hitler. We saw him at the party’s two large Nuremberg rallies, surrounded by the masses who saw in him Germany’s hope. In the evenings, we sat with him in his hotel room. He was dressed in a simple brown shirt, the same as always, as if nothing had happened. Someone once said that the great is simple, and the simple is great. If that is true, it surely applies to Hitler. His nature and his whole philosophy is a brilliant simplification of the spiritual need and fragmentation that engulfed the German people after the war. He found the lowest common denominator. That is why his idea won: he modeled it, and through him the average man in the street saw its depth and significance. One has to have seen him in defeat as well as victory to understand what sort of man he is. He never broke. He never lost courage or faith. Hundreds came to him seeking new hope, and no one left without receiving renewed strength. On the day before August 13th, 1932, we met in a small farmhouse outside Potsdam. We talked deep into the night, but not about our prospects for the next day, but rather about music, philosophy, and questions of worldviews. Then came the experiences one can only have with him. He spoke of the difficult years of his youth in Vienna and Munich, of his war experiences, of first years of the party. Few know how hard and bitterly he had to fight. Today he is surrounded by praise and thanks. Only fifteen years ago he was a lonely individual among millions. The only difference between him and those millions was his burning faith and his fanatic resolve to transform that faith into action. Those who believed that Hitler was finished after the party’s defeat in November 1932 failed to understand him. Only someone who did not know him at all could make such a mistake. Hitler is one of those persons who rises from his defeats. Friedrich Nietzsche’s phrase fits him well: “That which does not destroy me only makes me stronger.”

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This man, suffering under financial and party problems for years, assailed by the flood of lies from his enemies, wounded in the depths of his heart by the disloyalty of false friends, still found the limitless faith to lift his party from desperation to new victories. How many thousands of kilometers have I sat behind him in cars or airplanes on election campaigns! How often did I see the thankful look of a man on the street, or a mother lifting her child to show him, and how often have I seen joy and happiness when people recognized him! He kept his pockets filled with packages of cigarettes, each with a one or two mark coin. Every working lad he met got one. He had a friendly word for every mother and a warm handshake for every child. Not without reason does the German youth admire him. They know that this man is young at heart and that their cause is in his good hands. Last Easter Monday we sat with him in his small house on the Obersalzberg. A group of young hikers from Braunau, where he was born, came by for a visit. How surprised these lads were when the chancellor of the German Reich not only gave them a friendly greeting, but also invited these fifteen boys into his house. He hurriedly prepared them lunch, and they told him all about his hometown of Braunau. The people have a fine sense for the truly great. Nothing impresses the people as deeply as when a person truly belongs to his people. Of whom but Hitler could this be true: As he returned from Berchtesgaden to Munich, people waved in every village. The children shouted “Heil!” and threw bouquets of flowers into the car. The S.A. had closed the road in Traunstein. There was no moving either forward or back. Confidently and matter-of-factly, the S.A. Führer walked up to the car and said: “My Führer, an old party member is dying in the hospital and his last wish is to see his Führer.” Mountains of work were waiting in Munich. But Hitler ordered the car to turn around and sat for half an hour in the hospital at the bedside of his dying party comrade. The Marxist press claimed he was a tyrant who dominated his satraps. What is he really? He is the best friend of his comrades. He has an open heart for every sorrow and every need, he has human understanding. He knows each of his associates thoroughly and nothing happens in their public or private lives of which he is not aware. If misfortune happens, he helps them to bear it, and rejoices more than anyone else at their successes. Never have I seen his two sides in anyone else. We had dinner together on the night of the Reichstag fire. We talked and listened to music. Hitler was a person among people. Twenty minutes later he stood in the smoldering, smoking ruins of the Reichstag building and gave piercing orders that led to the destruction of communism. Later he sat in an editorial office and dictated an article. For those who do not know Hitler, it seems a miracle that millions of people love and support him. For those who know him, it is only natural. The secret of his success is in the indescribable magic of his personality. Those who know him the best love and honor him the most. One who has sworn allegiance to him is devoted to him, body and soul. I thought it was necessary tonight to say that, and to have it said by someone who really knows him, and who could find the courage to break through the barriers of reserve and speak of Hitler the man. Today he has left the bustle of the capital. He left the wreaths and hymns of praise in Berlin. He is somewhere in his beloved Bavaria, far from the noise of the streets, to find peace and quiet. Perhaps in a nearby room someone will turn on a loudspeaker. If that

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should happen, then let me say to him, and to all of Germany: My Führer! Millions and millions of the best Germans send you their best wishes and give you their hearts. And we, your closest associates and friends, are gathered in honor and love. We know how little you like praise. But we must still say this: You have lifted Germany from its deepest disgrace to honor and dignity. You should know that behind you, and if necessary before you, a strong and determined group of fighters stands that is ready at any time to give its all for you and your idea. We wish both for your sake and ours that fate will preserve you for many decades, and that you may always remain our best friend and comrade. This is the wish of your fellow fighters and friends for your birthday. We offer you our hands and ask that you always remain for us what you are today: Our Hitler!

4.  Adolf Hitler, Closing Address to the Nazi Party Congress, Nuremberg, Germany, (September 10, 1934) 6 The 1934 Nazi Party Congress at Nuremberg became the subject of one of the most famous, or rather, infamous propaganda movies of all time: Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will. Hitler asked Riefenstahl to emphasize the aesthetic element in the Nazi movement so that those who would not otherwise be interested in politics would be engrossed by it. In this Closing Address, which the reader can also hear in the movie in its original language, Hitler prepares his audience to embrace his ideological one-party state by emphasizing its nobility or beauty. Notice the focus on the German people, the youth, the tradition, and the sense of eternity. The Sixth Party Congress of the Movement is coming to an end. What millions of Germans outside our Party ranks may have considered only a most impressive display of political power, has meant immeasurably more for the old fighters: for them, a great personal and spiritual meeting of comrades-in-arms. And perhaps some among you, in spite of the compelling splendor of this gathering of our Party, have been fondly recalling those days when it was still quite difficult to be a National Socialist. Even then, when our Party had only seven men, it already voiced two unchanging principles: first, it wanted to be a truly ideological movement; and second, it wanted to be the sole power in Germany – without compromise! As a Party, we had to remain in the minority because we had to mobilize those with a fighting spirit and a true sense of sacrifice, and these never amounted to a majority, but always to a minority. It is because these men, the best of the German race, in proud self-confidence, have courageously and boldly claimed the leadership of the Reich and Nation, that the people in ever greater numbers have since joined this leadership and subordinated themselves to it. The German people are happily aware that the endless divisions of the past have finally been replaced by one fixed pole. We carry the very best German blood – and we know it! We are determined to seize leadership of this Nation, to keep this leadership, and never to relinquish it. There will always be only one part of the Nation that consists

6

Translated for this volume.

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of truly active fighters, and more is demanded from them than from the millions of other citizens. For these fighters, they must not merely vow, “I believe,” but must rather vow, “I will fight!” The Party will forever be the elite of the political leadership of the German people. It will remain unchangeable in its doctrine, hard as steel in its organization, supple and adaptable in its tactics. But in its entirety, it will be as a Holy Order! The goal must be that all decent Germans will become National Socialists. But only the best National Socialists are members of the Nazi Party! In the past, our enemies saw to it that through prohibition and persecution our movement was periodically purged of the lighter, weaker chaff that began to settle in it. Today, we must practice selectiveness ourselves and expunge what has proven to be rotten and what therefore does not belong among us! It is our wish and will that this State and this Reich will endure for millennia to come. We can rejoice in the knowledge that the future belongs to us completely! While the older ones among us may possibly waver, the youth is absolutely committed to us – body and soul! Only when we in the Party use all our strength and have realized the highest essence and idea of National Socialism – only then will the party be an eternal and indestructible possession of the German people and the German Nation. Then the magnificent, glorious army of the old, the bearers of our nation’s arms, will be joined by the no-less tradition-bound leadership of the Party. Together these two establishments will teach and shape the German people, and they will carry on their shoulders the German State and the German Reich! At this hour, tens of thousands of Party comrades are already leaving the city. While some are still reveling in their memories, others are preparing for the next roll call – again and again people will come and go, and always they will be moved, gladdened, and inspired anew. For the idea of the movement is the living expression of our people, and it is therefore a symbol of eternity itself. Long live the National Socialist Movement! Long live Germany!

5.  JosePH Stalin, “Defects in Party Work and Measures for Liquidating Trotskyite and Other Double-Dealers,” Report to the Plenum of the Central Committee (excerpts) (March 3, 1937) 7 Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (1878–1953) succeeded Lenin as the leader of the Communist Party in 1922. In 1936, Stalin enlisted the secret police (the NKVD) to begin executing many of his political enemies under the auspices of ridding the Soviet Union of the “capitalist enemy’s fifth column.” These mass executions began in the government and the Red Army, and they soon spread to include the intelligentsia and ordinary peasants. Within only two years, Stalin had overseen 7

Source: originally translated and published by the Cooperative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR, Moscow (1937). Translation is in the public domain and can be accessed at www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1937/03/03.htm.

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the murders of more than 500,000 people, in what has come to be known as The Great Purge. Facing backlash, he soon executed the former heads of the NKVD for having committed the mass executions which he himself oversaw. The speech below followed the recent show trials of several prominent Old Bolshevik leaders. Comrades! From the reports and the debates on these reports heard at this plenum, it is evident that we are dealing with the following three main facts. First, the wrecking and diversionist-espionage work of agents of foreign countries, among whom a rather active role was played by the Trotskyists, affected more or less all, or nearly all, of our organizations – economic, administrative, and Party. Second, agents of foreign countries, among them the Trotskyites, penetrated not only into lower organizations, but also into certain responsible posts. Third, some of our leading comrades, both at the center and at the periphery, not only failed to discern the face of these wreckers, diversionists, spies, and killers, but proved to be so careless, complacent, and naive that at times they themselves assisted in promoting agents of foreign states to responsible posts. These are the three incontrovertible facts which naturally emerge from the reports and the discussions on them. I. Political Carelessness How are we to explain the fact that our leading comrades, having a rich experience in the struggle against all sorts of anti-Party and anti-Soviet currents, proved in the present case to be so naive and blind that they were unable to discern the real face of the enemies of the people, that they failed to recognize the wolves in sheep’s clothing and were unable to tear away their masks? Can it be claimed that the wrecking and diversionist-espionage work of the agents of foreign states operating in the territory of the USSR can be anything unexpected and unprecedented for us? No, it is impossible to claim this. This is demonstrated by the wrecking acts in various branches of the national economy during the past ten years, beginning in the Shakhty period, as recorded in official documents. Can it be claimed that in this past period there were no precautionary signals or warnings about the wrecking, spying, or terrorist activities of the Trotskyist-Zinovievist agents of fascism? No, it is impossible to claim this. We had such signals, and Bolsheviks have no right to forget about them. The foul murder of Comrade Kirov was the first serious warning which indicated that enemies of the people would resort to double-dealing and that they would mask themselves as Bolsheviks, as Party members, in order to worm their way into our confidence and to thus open access for themselves into our organizations. The trial of the Leningrad Center, as well as the Zinoviev-Kamenev trial, gave new grounds for the lessons following from the foul murder of Comrade Kirov.8

8

Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev formed a ruling triumvirate with Stalin in the early 1920s. Zinoniev and Kamanev later joined an alliance in favor of Trotskyism and opposed to Stalin. Zinoniev and Kamanev were expelled from the Communist Party in 1932, imprisoned in 1934 on the pretext of their supposed involvement in the assassination of Sergei Kirov, and executed in a show trial along with fourteen others in 1936.

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The trial of the Zinovievist-Trotskyist Bloc broadened the lessons of the preceding trials and demonstrated before our eyes that the Zinovievites and Trotskyites had united around themselves every hostile bourgeois element; that they had turned into an espionage, diversionist-terrorist agency of the German secret police; that double-dealing and masking themselves are the only means by which the Zinovievites and Trotskyites can penetrate into our organizations; that vigilance and political insight are the surest means of preventing such penetration and for liquidation of the Zinovievist-Trotskyist gang. The Central Committee of the RKP(b) [Russian Communist Party, Bolsheviks], in its January 18, 1935 confidential letter on the foul killing of Comrade Kirov, emphatically warned Party organizations against political complacency and narrow-minded empty-headedness. That confidential letter stated: “We must put a stop to the opportunistic complacency which arises from the mistaken assumption that as we grow in the strength of our forces, our enemies become ever more tame and harmless. Such an assumption is fundamentally wrong. It is an echo of the Right deviation, which assured all that the enemies would quietly creep into Socialism, that they would become real Socialists in the end. Bolsheviks must not rest on their laurels and become empty-headed. We do not need complacency, but vigilance—real, Bolshevik, revolutionary vigilance. We must remember that the more hopeless the position of the enemies becomes, the more readily they will clutch at extreme measures as the only measures of the doomed in their struggle against Soviet power. One must remember this and be vigilant.” In its confidential letter of July 29, 1936, on the espionage-terrorist activities of the Trotskyist-Zinovievist bloc, the Central Committee of the RKP(b) once again called upon Party organizations to display the utmost vigilance, the ability to discern enemies of the people, no matter how well masked they may be. The confidential letter stated: “Now that it has been proven that the Trotskyist-Zinovievist fiends are uniting in the struggle against Soviet power all the most infuriated and vicious enemies of the toilers of our country—the spies, provocateurs, diversionists, whiteguards, kulaks, and so on; when all boundaries have been obliterated between these elements on the one hand and the Trotskyists and Zinovievists on the other, all of our Party organizations and all members of the Party must understand that vigilance on the part of Communists is imperative in every sector and under all circumstances. The inalienable quality of every Bolshevik under present conditions must be the ability to discern an enemy of the Party, no matter how well masked he may be.” And so there were signals and warnings. What did these signals and warnings call for? They called for the elimination of the weakness of Party organizational work and for the transformation of the Party into an impregnable fortress into which not a single double-dealer could penetrate. They called upon us to put a stop to the underestimation of Party-political work and to make an emphatic turn towards the utmost strengthening of such work, towards the strengthening of political vigilance. And what happened? The facts show that the signals and warnings were heeded very slowly by our comrades. This was eloquently demonstrated by the well-known facts revealed in the course of the campaign for the verification and exchange of Party documents. How are we to explain the fact that these warnings and signals did not have their proper effect?

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How are we to explain that our Party comrades, despite their experience in the struggle against anti-Soviet elements, despite the numerous warning signals and precautionary signs, proved to be politically short-sighted in the face of the wrecking, espionage-diversionist work of the enemies of the people? Perhaps our Party comrades have become worse than they were previously, less conscious and less disciplined? No, of course not! Perhaps they have begun to degenerate? Once again, no! Such an assumption would be totally unfounded. Then what is the matter? From where does this empty-headedness, carelessness, complacency, and blindness come? The fact of the matter is that our Party comrades, carried away by economic campaigns and colossal successes on the economic construction front, simply forgot about certain very important facts which Bolsheviks have no right to forget. They forgot about the one basic fact connected with the international position of the USSR and did not notice two very important facts which have a direct relationship regarding the present-day wreckers, spies, diversionists, and killers who shield themselves behind the Party membership card and mask themselves as Bolsheviks. II. Capitalist Encirclement What are the facts which our Party comrades have forgotten about or which they simply have not noticed? They have forgotten that Soviet power was victorious in only one-sixth of the world, that five-sixths of the world are in the possession of the capitalist states. They have forgotten that the Soviet Union finds itself encircled by capitalist states. We have an accepted habit of chattering about capitalist encirclement, but people don’t want to ponder what this thing, capitalist encirclement, truly is. Capitalist encirclement – it is not an empty phrase, it is a very real and unpleasant phenomenon. Capitalist encirclement means that there is one country, the Soviet Union, which has established at home a Socialist order, and that there are, besides, many countries, bourgeois countries, which continue to carry on the capitalist form of life and which encircle the Soviet Union, waiting for the opportunity to attack it, to crush it, or, in any case, to undermine its might and to weaken it. It is this main fact that our comrades have forgotten. But it is precisely this fact which determines the basis of the relations between the capitalist encirclement and the Soviet Union. Take, for example, the bourgeois states. Naive people might think that exceptionally good relations exist between them as states of the same type. But only naive people can think like that. In actual fact, far from neighborly relations exist between them. It has been proved as surely as two times two is four that the bourgeois states shower each other with spies, wreckers, diversionists, and sometimes also killers, who are given the task of penetrating into the institutions and enterprises of these states, of setting up their agencies and “in case of necessity,” of disrupting them in order to weaken them and to undermine their might. So is the case at the present time. So also was the case in the past. Take, for example, the states in Europe at the time of Napoleon I. France was then swarming with spies and diversionists from the camps of the Russians, Germans, Austrians, and English. And, on the other hand, England, the German states, Austria, and Russia had at that time behind their lines no fewer spies and diversionists from the French camp. Agents of England twice made an attempt on the life of Napoleon and several times roused the Vendee peasants in France against the government of

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Napoleon. And what was the Napoleonic government? A bourgeois government which strangled the French Revolution and retained only those results of the revolution which were advantageous to the big bourgeoisie. Needless to say, the Napoleonic government did not remain in debt to its neighbors and also undertook diversionist measures. So it was in the past, 130 years ago. So the matter stands today, 130 years after Napoleon I. Now France and England are swarming with German spies and diversionists and, on the other hand, Anglo-French spies and diversionists are active in turn in Germany. America is swarming with Japanese spies and diversionists, and Japan with American. Such is the law of the interrelations between bourgeois states. The question arises, why should the bourgeois states treat the Soviet Socialist state more gently and in a more neighborly manner than towards bourgeois states of the same type? Why should they send to the Soviet Union fewer spies, wreckers, diversionists, and killers than they send to the bourgeois states akin to them? From where did this assumption come? Would it not be truer, from the point of view of Marxism, to assume that the bourgeois states would send to the Soviet Union two and three times more wreckers, spies, diversionists, and killers than to the rear of any bourgeois state? Is it not clear that for as long as we have capitalist encirclement, we shall have wreckers, spies, diversionists, and killers sent to our rear by agents of foreign states? All this was forgotten by our Party comrades and, having forgotten about this, they were taken unawares. That is why the espionage-diversionist work of the Trotskyist agents of the Japano-German secret police was for some of our comrades a complete surprise. III. Contemporary Trotskyism Furthermore: In waging the struggle against Trotskyist agents, our Party comrades failed to notice, they overlooked the fact, that present-day Trotskyism is not what it was, let us say, seven or eight years ago; that Trotskyism and the Trotskyists have, during this time, undergone a serious evolution which has radically altered the face of Trotskyism; that in view of this in the struggle against Trotskyism the methods of struggle likewise must be radically altered. Our Party comrades have failed to notice that Trotskyism has ceased to be a political tendency within the working class, that from that political tendency within the working class which it was seven or eight years ago, Trotskyism has transformed into a frenzied and unprincipled band of wreckers, diversionists, spies, and killers, acting upon the instructions of the intelligence service organs of foreign states. What is a political tendency within the working class? A political tendency within the working class is a group or party which has its own definite political face, platform, and program; it does not and cannot hide its views from the working class but, on the contrary, propagates its views openly and honestly before the eyes of the working class; it is not afraid to show its political face before the working class, not afraid to demonstrate its real aims and tasks before the working class but, on the contrary, frankly goes to the working class in order to convince it of the correctness of its views. Trotskyism in the past, seven or eight years ago, was such a political tendency within the working class – anti-Leninist and therefore profoundly mistaken, it is true – nevertheless, a political tendency. Can it be said that present-day Trotskyism, the Trotskyism, let us say, of 1936, is a political tendency in the working class? No, it is impossible to say this. Why? Because the present-day Trotskyists are afraid to show their real face before the working class, afraid to reveal to it their real aims and tasks; they assiduously conceal from the working

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class their political face, afraid that if the working class finds out their real intentions it will swear at them as people alien from the working class and will drive them away. This, in fact, explains why the basic method of Trotskyist work is not now open and honest propaganda of its views before the working class, but rather the masking of its views: the servile and groveling praise of the views of their opponents, the pharisaical and false trampling of their own views in the mud. At the trial in 1936, if you remember, Kamenev and Zinoviev flatly denied that they had any kind of political platform. They had a full opportunity to unfold their political platform at the trial. Nevertheless, they did not do so, declaring that they had no political platform whatsoever. There can be no doubt that they both lied in denying that they had a platform. Now even the blind can see that they had a political platform. But why did they deny the existence of any political platform? Because they were afraid to disclose their real political face, they were afraid to demonstrate their real political platform of restoring Capitalism in the USSR; they were afraid that such a platform would arouse revulsion in the working class. At the trial in 1937, Piatakov, Radek, and Sokolnikov took a different course. They did not deny that the Trotskyists and Zinovievists had a political platform. They admitted they had a definite political platform, admitted it and unfolded in their testimony. But they unfolded it not in order to rally the working class, to rally the people to support the Trotskyist platform, but rather to damn it and brand it as an anti-people and anti-proletarian platform. The restoration of capitalism, the liquidation of the collective farms and state-farms, the re-establishment of a system of exploitation, alliance with the Fascist forces of Germany and Japan to bring nearer a war with the Soviet Union, a struggle for war and against the policy of peace, the territorial dismemberment of the Soviet Union, with the Ukraine to the Germans and the Maritime Province to the Japanese, the scheming for the military defeat of the Soviet Union in the event of an attack on it by hostile states and, as a means for achieving these aims: wrecking, diversionism, industrial terror against the leaders of Soviet power, espionage on behalf of Japano-German Fascist forces – such was the political platform of present-day Trotskyism as unfolded by Piatakov, Radek, and Sokolnikov. Naturally the Trotskyists could not but conceal such a platform from the people, from the working class. And they concealed it not only from the working class, but also from the Trotskyist rank and file as well, and not only from the Trotskyist rank and file, but even from the upper Trotskyist leadership, comprised of a small group of 30 or 40 people. When Radek and Piatakov demanded permission from Trotsky to convene a small conference of 30 or 40 Trotskyists in order to provide information on the character of this platform, Trotsky forbade them to do so, saying that it was inexpedient to speak of the true character of this platform even to a small group of Trotskyists, since such an “operation” might lead to a split. “Political figures” concealing their views and their platform not only from the working class but also from the Trotskyist rank and file, and not only from the Trotskyist rank and file, but also from the upper leadership of the Trotskyists – such is the face of contemporary Trotskyism. But from this it follows that contemporary Trotskyism can no longer be called a political tendency within the working class. Contemporary Trotskyism is not a political trend within the working class, but an unprincipled and intellectually devoid band of wreckers, diversionists, intelligence agents, spies, and killers; a band of sworn enemies of the working class in the hire of the intelligence service organs of foreign states.

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Such is the indisputable result of the evolution of Trotskyism in the past seven or eight years. Such is the difference between Trotskyism in the past and Trotskyism in the present. The mistake our Party comrades made lies in the fact they failed to notice this profound difference between Trotskyism in the past and Trotskyism in the present day. They failed to notice that the Trotskyists have long since transformed into highway robbers capable of any villainy, capable of all that is disgusting down to espionage and straight betrayal of their motherland in order to injure the Soviet state and Soviet power. They failed to notice this and were therefore unable to adapt themselves in time to wage a struggle against the Troskyists in a new way, more decisively. That is why the abominations of the Trotskyists in recent years were for some of our Party comrades such a total surprise. […]

6.  Adolf Hitler, Speech Declaring War on the United States of America (excerpts) (December 11, 1941) 9 A few days after the American declaration of war on Japan, Hitler chose to declare war on the United States. According to the journalist and historian Sebastian Haffner, this decision was Hitler’s greatest crime against the German nation as Hitler himself recognized it (as opposed to Hitler’s crimes against Jewish people and others whom he did not recognize as Germans). At the time of the speech, it was clear that Germany’s war against the Soviet Union had reached a turning point. On December 7, the Soviets had started a counter-offensive against the German forces near Moscow. Why should Germany at such a time engage in a direct war with the wealthiest country in the world? Hitler consulted with very few, if any, of his advisors before suddenly making the declaration. Note that the speech ends with a threat to kill anyone who criticizes his war policy. Deputies, Men of the German Reichstag! A year of events of historical significance is drawing to an end. A year of the greatest decisions lies ahead. In these serious times, I speak to you, Deputies of the German Reichstag, as to the representatives of the German nation. Beyond and above that, the whole German people should take note of this glance into the past, as well as of the coming decisions the present and future impose upon us. After the renewed refusal of my peace offer in January 1940 by the then British Prime Minister and the clique which supported or else dominated him, it became clear that this war – against all reasons of common sense and necessity – must be fought to its end. You know me, my old Party companions: you know I have always been an enemy of half measures or weak decisions. If the Providence has so willed that the German

9

Source: Jewish Virtual Library, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/hitler-s-speech-declaring-waragainst-the-united-states. As translated by the Monitoring Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Translation modified.

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people cannot be spared this fight, then I can only be grateful that it entrusted me with the leadership in this historic struggle which, for the next 500 or 1,000 years, will be described as decisive, not only for the history of Germany, but for the whole of Europe and indeed the whole world. The German people and their soldiers are working and fighting today, not only for the present, but for the coming, indeed for the most distant, generations. The Creator has entrusted to us a historical overhaul of unprecedented proportions, which we are now obliged to accomplish. […] With every month I became more convinced that the plans of the men in the Kremlin aimed at domination and annihilating all Europe. I have had to submit to the nation the full extent of the Russian military preparations. At a time when Germany had only a few divisions in the provinces bordering on Russia it would have been evident to a blind man that a concentration of power of singular and world-historic dimensions was taking place, and that not in order to defend something which was threatened, but merely in order to attack an object it did not seem possible to defend. The lightning conclusion of the Western campaign, however, robbed the Moscow overlords of their hope of an early flagging of German power. This did not alter their intentions – it merely led to a postponement of the date on which they intended to strike. In the summer of 1941 they thought the time was ripe. A new Mongolian storm was now to sweep Europe. At the same time, however, Mr. Churchill spoke on the English aspect of the struggle with Germany. He saw fit, in a cowardly manner, to deny that in the secret session of 1940 in the House of Commons he pointed out that the entry of Russians into the war, which was to come in 1941 at the very latest, was the most important factor which would make a successful conclusion of the war possible. This was also to enable England to take the offensive. In the spring of that year, Europe was to feel the full extent of the might of a world power which seemed to dispose of inexhaustible human material and resources. Dark clouds began to gather on the European sky. For, my Deputies, what is Europe? There is no fitting geographical definition of our Continent, but only a national and cultural one. Not the Urals form the frontier of our Continent, but the eternal line which divides the Eastern and Western conceptions of life. There was a time when Europe was that Greek Island into which Nordic tribes had penetrated in order to light a torch for the first time which from then onwards began slowly, but surely to brighten the world of man. When these Greeks repulsed the invasion of the Persian conquerors, they did not only defend their homeland, which was Greece, but that idea which we call Europe today. And then Europe traveled from Hellas to Rome. With the Greek spirit and Greek culture, the Roman way of thinking and Roman statesmanship were joined. An Empire was created which to this day has not been equaled in its significance and creative power, let alone outdone. When, however, the Roman legions were defending Rome against the African onslaught of Carthage and at last gained a victory, again it was not Rome they were fighting for, but the Europe of that time, which consisted of the Greco-Roman world. The next incursion against this homestead of European culture was carried out from the distant East. A terrible stream of barbarous, uncultured hordes sallied forth from the interior of Asia deep into the hearts of the European Continent, burning, looting, murdering – a true scourge of the Lord. In the battle of the Catalonian fields, in a fateful struggle of incalculable significance, for the first time Romans and Germans joined forces for the sake of a culture which – spreading outward from the Greeks, spreading beyond the Romans – had now cast its spell on the Germans, too. Europe had grown.

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The West arose from Hellas and Rome, and its defense was henceforth the task not only of the Romans, but above all of the Germans. But to the same extent that the West, illuminated by Greek culture and filled with the effect of the mighty traditions of the Roman Empire, expanded its scope through Germanic colonization, so too did the concept that we call Europe expand in scope. Whether it was the German Emperor who was repelling the attacks from the East on the Field of Lech or whether Africa was being pushed back from Spain in long fighting, it was always the struggle of nascent Europe against a surrounding world alien in its deepest essence. If once Rome was due immortal merits for the creation and defense of this continent, then the Germans have now taken over the defense and the protection of this family of nations – which, it is true, may be quite differentiated and divergent in their political structures and objectives, but which in the overall picture constitutes one bloodline and is culturally partly the same and partly a complementary unit. And from this Europe there was not only a settlement of other parts of the world, but also a spiritual and cultural insemination, of which only those who are willing to seek truth instead of denying it are aware. Thus it was not England who brought culture to the Continent, but the offspring of Germanic nationhood on the Continent who went as Anglo-Saxons and Normans to that Island made possible a development in a way surely unique. In just the same way, it was not America who discovered Europe, but the other way around. And everything which America has not drawn from Europe may well appear worthy of admiration to a Judaized, mixed race; Europe, on the other hand, sees in it a sign of cultural decay. Deputies and Men of the German Reichstag, I had to make this survey, for the fight which in the first months of this year gradually began to become clear, and which the German Reich is this time called to lead, also far exceeds the interests of our nation and country. Just as the Greeks once faced the Persians in war, and the Romans faced the Mongolians, and the Spanish heroes defended not only Spain, but the whole of Europe against Africa – just so, Germany is fighting today, not for herself, but for the entire Continent. And it is a happy sign of the fact that this realization is deep in the subconscious of most European nations that, whether by open statements or by the influx of volunteers, they are sharing in this struggle. When, on the 6th of April of this year, the German and Italian Armies took up their positions for the fight against Yugoslavia and Greece, it was the introduction of the great struggle in which we are still involved. The revolt in Belgrade which led to the overthrow of the former Regent and his Government was decisive for the further course of events in this part of Europe, for England was also a party to this putsch. But the chief role was played by Soviet Russia. What I refused to Mr. Molotov on his visit to Berlin, Stalin now thought he could achieve by a revolutionary movement, even against our will. Without consideration for the agreements which had been concluded, the intentions of the Bolsheviks in power grew still wider. The Pact of Friendship with the new revolutionary regime rapidly illuminated the closeness of the threatening danger. The feats achieved by the German Armed Forces were given worthy recognition in the German Reichstag on the 4th of May. But what I was then unfortunately unable to express was the realization that we were progressing at tremendous speed toward a fight with a State which was not yet intervening because it was not yet fully prepared, and because it was impossible to use the aerodromes and landing grounds at that time of year on account of the melting snow. My deputies, when in 1940 I realized from communication in the English House of Commons and the observation of the Russian troop movements on our frontiers that

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there was the possibility of danger arising in the East of the Reich, I immediately gave orders to set up numerous new armored, motorized, and infantry divisions. The conditions for this were available from the point of view both of material and personnel. I will give you, my Deputies, and indeed the whole German people, only one assurance: the more the democracies speak much about armaments, as is easily understandable, the more National Socialist Germany will work. It was so in the past; it is not different today. Every year brings us increased, and above all improved weapons, there where decisions will be made. In spite of my determination not to allow under any circumstances that our opponent make the first stab at our heart – in spite of that, my decision was a very difficult one. If democratic newspapers today declare that, had I known the strength of our Bolshevik opponent more accurately, I would have hesitated to attack, they understand the position just as little as they understand me. I sought no war. On the contrary I did everything to avoid it. But I would have been forgetful of my duty and responsibility if, in spite of realizing the inevitability of a fight by force of arms, I had failed to draw the only possible conclusions. In view of the mortal danger from Soviet Russia, not only to the German Reich, but to all Europe, I decided – if possible, a few days before the outbreak of this heightened struggle – to give the signal to attack myself. Today, we have overwhelming and authentic proof that Russia intended to attack; we are also quite clear about the date on which the attack was to take place. In view of the great danger, the proportions of which we fully realize perhaps only today, I can only thank God that He enlightened me at the proper time and that He gave me the strength to do what had to be done! To this, not only millions of German soldiers owe their lives, but Europe its very existence. This much I may state today: had this wave of over 20,000 tanks, hundreds of divisions, tens of thousands of guns, accompanied by more than 10,000 aircraft, suddenly moved against the Reich, Europe would have been lost. Fate has destined a number of nations to forestall this attack, to ward it off with the sacrifice of their blood. Had Finland not decided immediately to take up arms for the second time, the leisurely bourgeois life of the other Nordic countries would soon have come to an end. Had the German Reich not faced the enemy with her soldiers and arms, a flood would have swept over Europe, which once and for all would have finished the ridiculous British idea of maintaining the European balance of power in all its senselessness and stupid tradition. Had Slovaks, Hungarians, Rumanians not taken over part of the protection of this European world, the Bolshevik hordes would have swept like Attila’s Huns over the Danubian countries, and in the realm of the Ionian Sea, Tartars and Mongols would have enforced today the revision of the Montreux Agreement. Had Italy, Spain and Croatia not sent their divisions, they would have made impossible the establishment of a European defense Front, from which emanated the idea of the New Europe as propaganda to all other nations. Sensing and realizing this, volunteers have come from Northern and Western Europe, Norwegians, Danes, Dutchmen, Flemings, Belgians, even Frenchmen – volunteers who gave the struggle of the United Powers of the Axis the character of a European crusade in the truest sense of the word. The time has not yet come to talk about the planning and the conduct of this campaign, but I believe that I may sketch in a few sentences what has been achieved in this most gigantic of all struggles, in which memories of the various impressions might so easily fade because of the vastness of the space and the great number of important events.

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The attack began on the 22nd of June; with irresistible daring the frontier fortifications which were destined to secure the Russian advance against us were broken through. Already on June 23rd Grodno fell. […] [Hitler details at length the recent progress of Germany’s campaigns on the Eastern Front.] My Deputies, my German people, those are sober facts and perhaps dry figures. But may they never disappear from the history and, above all, from the memory and the consciousness of our own German people. For behind those figures are hidden the achievements, the sacrifices, the privations, the everlasting heroic courage, and the readiness to die of millions of the best men of our own nation and of the States allied to us. All this had to be fought for by struggles, by risks of health and life, of which those at home can hardly have an idea. Marching for endless distances, tormented by heat and thirst, often inhibited almost to the point of desperation by the mud of bottomless roads – exposed from the White to the Black Sea to the rigors of a climate that sunk from the heat of August to the blizzards of December – tortured by insects, suffering from dirt and vermin, freezing in snow and ice, they have fought – the Germans and the Finns, Italians, Slovaks, Hungarians and Rumanians, the Croats, the volunteers from the North and West European countries – all this: the soldiers of the Eastern Front! Only the beginning of winter will now check this movement; at the beginning of summer it will again no longer be possible to stop the movement. On this day I do not want to mention any individual section of the Armed Forces, I do not want to praise any particular command; they have all made a supreme effort. And yet, understanding and justice compel me to state one thing again and again; amongst our German soldiers the heaviest burden is born today, as in the past, by our matchless German infantry. From June 22nd to December 1st the German Army lost in this heroic fight 158,773 killed, 563,082 wounded and 31,191 missing. The Air Force lost 3,231 killed, 8,453 wounded and 2,028 missing. The Navy lost 210 killed, 232 wounded and 115 missing. The total losses of the armed forces are thus 162,314 killed, 571,767 wounded and 33,334 missing. Thus, the number killed and wounded was slightly more than double that of the Battle of the Somme, in missing a little less than half those missing at that time. But all, in this case, were fathers and sons of our German people. And now permit me to define my attitude to that other world, which has its representative in that man, who, while our soldiers are fighting in snow and ice, very tactfully likes to make his chats from the fireside, the man who is the main culprit of this war. When in 1939 the conditions of our national interest in the then-Polish State became more and more intolerable, I tried at first to eliminate those intolerable conditions by way of a peaceful settlement. For some time it seemed as though the Polish Government itself had seriously considered to agree to a sensible settlement. I may add that in German proposals nothing was demanded that had not been German property in former times. On the contrary, we renounced very much of what, before the World War, had been German property. You will recall the dramatic development of that time, in which the sufferings of German nationals increased continuously. You, my deputies, are in the best position to gauge the extent of the blood sacrifice, if you compare it to the casualties of the present war. The campaign in the East has so far cost the German armed forces about 160,000 killed; but in the midst of peace more than 62,000 Germans were killed during those months, some under the cruelest tortures. It could hardly be contested that the German Reich had a right to object to such conditions on its Frontiers and to demand that they should cease to exist and that it was entitled to

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think of its own safety; this could hardly be contested at a time when other countries were seeking elements of their safety even in foreign continents. The problems which had to be overcome were of no territorial significance. Mainly they concerned Danzig and the union with the Reich of the torn-off province, East Prussia. More difficult were the cruel persecutions the Germans were exposed to, in Poland particularly. The other minorities, incidentally, had to suffer a fate hardly less bitter. When in August the attitude of Poland – thanks to the carte blanche guarantee received from England – became still stiffer, the Government of the Reich found it necessary to submit, for the last time, a proposal on the basis of which we were willing to enter into negotiations with Poland – negotiations of which we fully and completely apprised the then British Ambassador. I may recall these proposals today: “Proposal for the settlement of the problem of the Danzig Corridor and of the question of the German-Polish minorities. The situation between the German Reich and Poland has become so strained that any further incident may lead to a clash between the Armed Forces assembled on both sides. Any peaceful settlement must be so arranged that the events mainly responsible for the existing situation cannot occur again – a situation which has caused a state of tension, not only in Eastern Europe, but also in other regions. The cause of this situation lies in the impossible Frontiers laid down by the Versailles dictate and the inhuman treatment of the German minorities in Poland.” I am now going to read the proposals in question. [Hitler then proceeded to read the first 12 points of these proposals.] The same goes for the proposals for safeguarding the minorities. This is the offer of an agreement such as could not have been made in a more loyal and magnanimous form by any government other than the National Socialist Government of the German Reich. The Polish Government at that period refused even so much as to consider this proposal. The question then arises: how could such an unimportant State dare simply to refuse an offer of this nature and furthermore, not only indulge in further atrocities to its German inhabitants who had given that country the whole of its culture, but even order mobilization? Perusal of documents of the Foreign Office in Warsaw has given us later some surprising explanations. There was one man who, with devilish lack of conscience, used all his influence to further the warlike intentions of Poland and to eliminate all possibilities of understanding. The reports which the then-Polish Ambassador in Washington, Count Potocki, sent to his government are documents from which it may be seen with a terrifying clearness to what an extent one man alone and the forces driving him are responsible for the second World War. The question next arises, how could this man fall into such fanatical enmity toward a country which in the whole of its history has never done the least harm either to America or to him personally? As far as Germany’s attitude towards America is concerned, I have to state: (i) Germany is perhaps the only great power which has never had a colony either in North or South America, or otherwise displayed there any political activity, unless mention be made of the emigration of many millions of Germans and of their work – which, however, has only been to the benefit of the American Continent and of the U.S.A. (ii) In the whole history of the coming into being and of the existence of the U.S.A. the German Reich has never adopted a politically unfriendly, let alone hostile attitude, but, on the contrary with the blood of many of its sons, it helped to defend the U.S.A. The German Reich never took part in any war against the U.S.A. It itself had war imposed upon it by the U.S.A. in 1917, and then for reasons which have been thoroughly revealed by an investigation committee set up by President Roosevelt himself. There are no other

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differences between the German and the American people, either territorial or political, which could possibly touch the interests let alone the existence of the U.S.A. There was always a difference of constitution, but that cannot be a reason for hostilities so long as the one state does not try to interfere with the other. America is a Republic, a Democracy, and today is a Republic under strong, authoritative leadership. The ocean lies between the two States. The divergences between Capitalist America and Bolshevik Russia, if such conceptions had any truth in them, would be much greater than between America led by a President and Germany led by a Führer. But it is a fact that the two conflicts between Germany and the U.S.A. were inspired by the same force and caused by two men in the U.S.A.: Wilson and Roosevelt. History has already passed its verdict on Wilson; his name stands for one of the basest breaches of the given word, that led to disruption not only among the so-called vanquished, but also among the victors. This breach of his word alone made possible the Dictate of Versailles. We know today that a group of interested financiers stood behind Wilson and made use of this paralytic professor because they hoped for increased business. The German people have had to pay for having believed this man with the collapse of their political and economic existence. But why is there now another President of the U.S.A. who regards it as his only task to intensify anti-German feeling to the pitch of war? National Socialism came to power in Germany in the same year as Roosevelt was elected President. It is now important to examine the moments that must be considered as the causes of today’s development. First, the personal side: I understand only too well that a world-wide distance separates Roosevelt’s ideas and my ideas. Roosevelt comes from a rich family and belongs to the class whose path is smoothed in the Democracies. I am only the child of a small, poor family and had to fight my way by work and industry. When the Great War came, Roosevelt occupied a position where he got to know only its pleasant consequences, enjoyed by those who do business while others bleed. I was only one of those who carry out orders, as an ordinary soldier, and naturally returned from the war just as poor as I was in Autumn 1914. I shared the fate of millions, and Franklin Roosevelt only the fate of the so-called Upper Ten Thousand. After the war Roosevelt tried his hand at financial speculation: he made profits out of the inflation, out of the misery of others, while I, together with many hundreds of thousands more, lay in hospital. When Roosevelt finally stepped on the political stage with all the advantages of his class, I was unknown and fought for the resurrection of my people. When Roosevelt took his place at the head of the U.S.A., he was the candidate of a Capitalist Party which made use of him: when I became Chancellor of the German Reich, I was the Führer of the popular movement I had created. The powers behind Roosevelt were those powers I had fought at home. The Brains Trust was composed of people such as we have fought against in Germany as parasites and removed from public life. And yet there is something in common between us. Roosevelt took over a State in a very poor economic condition, and I took over a Reich faced with complete ruin, also thanks to Democracy. In the U.S.A. there were 13,000,000 unemployed, and in Germany 7,000,000 part-time workers. The finances of both States were in tatters, and the decline of economic life as a whole seemed unstoppable. A development then started in the U.S.A. and in the German Reich which will make it easy for posterity to pass judgment on the correctness of our respective theories.

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While an unprecedented revival of economic life, culture and art took place in Germany under National Socialist leadership within the space of a few years, President Roosevelt did not succeed in bringing about even the slightest improvements in his own country. And yet this work must have been much easier in the U.S.A., where there live scarcely 15 persons on a square kilometer, as against 140 in Germany. If such a country does not succeed in assuring economic prosperity, this must be a result either of the bad faith of its leaders in power, or of a total inefficiency on the part of the leading men. In scarcely five years, economic problems had been solved in Germany and unemployment had been overcome. During the same period, President Roosevelt had increased the State Debt of his country to an enormous extent, had decreased the value of the dollar, had brought about a further disintegration of economic life, and all without diminishing the unemployment figures. All this is not surprising if one bears in mind that the men he had called to support him – or rather, the men who had called him – belonged to the Jewish element, whose interests are all for disintegration and never for order. While speculation was being fought in National Socialist Germany, it thrived astoundingly under the Roosevelt regime. Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation was all wrong; it was in fact the biggest failure ever suffered by one man. There can be no doubt that a continuation of this economic policy would have brought this President down in peace time, in spite of all his dialectical skill. In a European State he would surely have come eventually before a State Court on a charge of wantonly squandering the national wealth; but in a Civil Court, he would hardly have escaped being imprisoned for criminal business-conduct. Many well-respected Americans share this judgment – or better, this knowledge. A threatening opposition was gathering over the head of this man. He guessed that the only salvation for him lay in diverting public attention from home to foreign policy. It is interesting to study in this connection the reports of the Polish Envoy in Washington, Potocki. He repeatedly points out that Roosevelt was fully aware of the danger threatening the card castle of his economic system with collapse, and that he was therefore urgently in need of a diversion in foreign policy. He was strengthened in this resolve by the Jews around him. Their Old Testament thirst for revenge thought to see in the U.S.A. an instrument for preparing a second “Purim” for the European nations which were becoming increasingly anti-Semitic. The full diabolical meanness of Jewry rallied around this man, and he stretched out his hands. Thus began the increasing efforts of the American President to create conflicts, to do everything to prevent conflicts from being peacefully solved. For years this man harbored one desire – that a conflict should break out somewhere in the world. The most convenient place would be in Europe, where American economy could be committed to the cause of one of the belligerents in such a way that a political interconnection of interests would arise, calculated slowly to bring America nearer to such a conflict. This would thereby divert the public interest away from the bankrupt economic policy at home and towards foreign problems. His attitude to the German Reich in this spirit was particularly sharp. In 1937, Roosevelt made a number of speeches, including a particularly mean one pronounced in Chicago on October 5th, 1937. Systematically he began to incite American public opinion against Germany. He threatened to establish a kind of quarantine against the so-called Authoritarian States. While making these increasingly spiteful and inflammatory speeches, President Roosevelt summoned the American ambassadors to Washington to report to him. This event followed some further declarations of an insulting

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character; and ever since, the two countries have been connected with each other only through chargés d’affaires.10 From November 1938 onwards, his systematic efforts were directed towards sabotaging any possibility of an appeasement policy in Europe. In public, he was hypocritically pretending to be for peace; but at the same time, he was threatening any country ready to pursue a policy of peaceful understanding with the freezing of assets, with economic reprisals, with demands for the repayment of loans, etc. Staggering information to this effect can be derived from the reports of Polish Ambassadors in Washington, London, Paris and Brussels. In January, 1939, this man began to strengthen his campaign of incitement and threatened to take all possible Congressional measures against the Authoritarian States, with the exception of war. While alleging that other countries were trying to interfere in American affairs and insisting on the maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine, he himself began from March 1939 onwards to meddle in European affairs which were no concern at all of the President of the U.S.A., since he does not understand those problems. And even if he did understand them and the historic background behind them, he would have just as little right to worry about the central European area as the German Reich has to judge conditions in a U.S. State and to take an attitude towards them. But Mr. Roosevelt went even farther. In contradiction to all the tenets of international law, he declared that he would not recognize certain Governments which did not suit him, would not accept readjustments, would maintain Legations of States dissolved long before, or actually set them up as legal Governments. He even went so far as to conclude agreements with such envoys, and thus to acquire a right simply to occupy foreign territories. On April 15th, 1939 came Roosevelt’s famous appeal to myself and the Duce [Mussolini]. It was a clumsy combination of geographical and political ignorance and of the arrogance of the millionaire circles around him. It asked us to give undertakings to conclude non-aggression Pacts indiscriminately with any country, including mostly countries which were not even free, since Mr. Roosevelt’s allies had annexed them or changed them into Protectorates. You will remember, my Deputies, that I then gave a polite and clear reply to this meddling gentleman. For some months at least, this stopped the flow of eloquence from this honest warmonger. But his place was taken by his honorable spouse. She declined to live with her sons in a world such as the one we have worked out. And quite right, for this is a world of labor and not of cheating and trafficking. After a little rest, the husband of that woman came back on the scene and on November 4th, 1939, engineered the amendment of the Neutrality Law so as to suspend the ban on the export of arms, in favor of a one-sided delivery of arms to Germany’s opponents. He then begins, somewhat as in Asia and in China – but in the roundabout way of an economic infiltration – to establish a community of interests destined to become operative sooner or later. In the same month, he recognizes, as a so-called Government in exile, a gang of Polish emigrants whose only political foundation was a few million gold coins taken with them from Warsaw. On the 9th of April he goes on and orders

10

Chargés d’affaires are diplomats who serve in the absence of higher-ranking officials such as ambassadors; in this case, ambassadors were removed on account of hostilities between the US and Germany.

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the blocking of Norwegian and Danish assets under the lying pretext of placing them beyond the German reach, although he knows perfectly well that the Danish Government in its financial administration is not in any way being interfered with, let alone controlled, by Germany. To the various exiled Governments recognized by him, the Norwegian is now added. On May 15th, 1940, he recognizes the Dutch and Belgian émigré Governments. This is followed by blocking Dutch and Belgian assets. His true mentality then comes clearly to light in a telegram of 15th June to the French Prime Minister, Reynaud. He advises him that the American government will double its help to France, provided that France continues the war against Germany. So as to give still greater expression to this, his wish for a continuation of the war, he issues a declaration that the American Government will not recognize the results of the conquest of territories – i.e., the restoration to Germany of lands which had been stolen from her. I don’t need to assure you, Members of the Reichstag, that it is a matter of complete indifference to every German Government whether the President of the U.S.A. recognizes the frontiers of Europe or no, and that this indifference will continue in the future. I merely quote this to illustrate the methodical incitement which has come from this man who speaks hypocritically of peace, but always incites war. But now he is seized with fear that if peace is brought about in Europe, his squandering of billions on rearmament will be seen as outright fraud, since nobody will attack America unless America provokes the attack itself. On July 17th, 1940, the American President orders the blocking of French assets with a view, as he puts it, to placing them beyond German reach – but really in order to transfer the French gold from Casablanca to America with the assistance of an American cruiser. In July 1940, he tries by enlisting American citizens in the British Air Force and by training British airmen in the U.S.A. to pave ever-better the way to war. In August 1940, a military program is jointly drawn up between the U.S.A. and Canada. To make the establishment of a Canadian-U.S. Defense Committee plausible – plausible at least to the biggest fools – he invents from time to time crises, by means of which he pretends that America is being threatened with aggression. This he wishes to impress upon the American people by suddenly returning on the 3rd of April to Washington with all speed on account of the alleged danger of the situation. In September 1940 he draws still nearer to the war. He turns over to the British Fleet 50 destroyers of the American Navy in return for which, to be sure, he takes over several British bases in North and South America. From all these actions, it may be clearly seen how, with all his hatred for Socialist Germany, he forms the resolution of taking over, as safely and securely as possible, the British Empire in the moment of its downfall. Since England is no longer in the position to pay cash for all the American deliveries, he imposes the Lease-Lend Law on the American people. He thus receives powers to lend or lease support to countries, the defense of which may appear to him as vital in America’s interests. Then in 1941, as Germany cannot be made to react to any of his gestures, he takes yet a further step. As far back as the 9th of December 1939, American cruisers in the security zone handed over the German ship Columbus to the British ships. […] [Hitler proceeds to detail the escalation of conflicts between the U.S. and Germany over the course of 1940–41.] I will pass over the insulting attacks made by this so-called President against me. That he calls me a gangster is uninteresting. After all, this expression was not coined in Europe but in America, no doubt because such gangsters are lacking here. Apart from

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this, I cannot be insulted by Roosevelt, for I consider him insane, just as Wilson was. I don’t need to mention what this man has done for years in the same way against Japan. First he incites war and falsifies the causes, then odiously wraps himself in a cloak of Christian hypocrisy and slowly but surely leads mankind to war, not without calling God to witness the honesty of his attack, in the approved manner of an old Freemason. I think you have all found it a relief that now, at last, one State has been the first to take the step of protest against his historically unique and shame less ill-treatment of truth and of right – which protest this man has desired and about which he cannot complain. The fact that the Japanese Government, which has been negotiating for a year with this man, has at last become tired of being mocked by him in such an unworthy way, fills all German people, and all other decent people in the world, with deep satisfaction. We have seen what the Jews have done in Soviet Russia. We have made the acquaintance of the Jewish Paradise on earth. Millions of German soldiers have been able to see this country where the international Jews have destroyed people and property. The President of the U.S.A. ought finally to understand – I say this only because of his limited intellect – that we know that the aim of this struggle is to destroy one State after another. But the present German Reich has nothing more in common with the old Germany. And we, for our part, will now do what this provocateur has been trying to do so much for years. Not only because we are the ally of Japan, but also because Germany and Italy have enough insight and strength to comprehend that, in these historic times, the existence or non-existence of the nations is being decided, possibly forever. We clearly see the intention of the rest of the world towards us. They reduced Democratic Germany to hunger. They would exterminate our social things of today. When Churchill and Roosevelt state that they want to build up a new social order, later on, it is like a hairdresser with a bald head recommending a hair-restorer. These men, who live in the most socially backward states, have misery and distress enough in their own countries to occupy themselves with the distribution of foodstuffs. As for the German nation, it needs charity neither from Mr. Churchill nor from Mr. Roosevelt, let alone from Mr. Eden. It wants only its rights! It will secure for itself this right to life even if thousands of Churchills and Roosevelts conspire against it. In the whole history of the German nation, of nearly 2,000 years, it has never been so united as today and, thanks to National Socialism it will remain united in the future. Probably it has never seen so clearly, and rarely been so conscious of its honor. I therefore had the passports delivered to the American chargé d’affaires today and had the following unequivocally disclosed to him: As a consequence of the further extension of President Roosevelt’s policy, which is aimed at unrestricted world domination and dictatorship, the U.S.A. together with England have not hesitated from using any means to dispute the rights of the German, Italian and Japanese nations to the basis of their natural existence. The Governments of the U.S.A. and of England have therefore resisted, not only now but also for all time, every just understanding meant to bring about a better New Order in the world. Since the beginning of the war the American President, Roosevelt, has been guilty of a series of the worst crimes against international law; illegal seizure of ships and other property of German and Italian nationals were coupled with threats to, and looting of, those who were deprived of their liberty by being subject to internment. Roosevelt’s ever-increasing attacks finally went so far that he ordered the American Navy to attack everywhere ships under the German and Italian flags, and to sink them – this in gross violation of international law. American ministers boasted of having destroyed German

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submarines in this criminal way. German and Italian merchant-ships were attacked by American cruisers, captured and their crews imprisoned. There was no attempt at an official denial, and it has now been revealed in America that according to President Roosevelt’s plan, Germany and Italy were to be attacked in Europe by military means, in 1943 at the latest. In this way the sincere efforts of Germany and Italy to prevent an extension of the war and to maintain relations with the U.S.A. in spite of the unbearable provocations which have been carried on for years by President Roosevelt, have been frustrated. Germany and Italy have been finally compelled, in view of this, and in loyalty to the Tripartite Pact, to carry on the struggle against the U.S.A. and England jointly and side by side with Japan for the defense and thus for the maintenance of the liberty and independence of their nations and empires. The Three Powers have therefore concluded the following Agreement, which was signed in Berlin today: “In their unshakable determination not to lay down arms until the joint war against the U.S.A. and England reaches a successful conclusion, the German, Italian, and Japanese Governments have agreed on the following points: Article I: Germany, Italy and Japan will wage the common war forced upon them by the U.S.A. and England with all the means of power at their disposal, to a victorious conclusion. Article II: Germany, Italy and Japan undertake not to conclude an armistice or peace with the U.S.A. or with England without complete mutual understanding. Article III: Germany, Italy and Japan will continue the closest cooperation even after the victorious conclusion of the war in order to bring about a just new order in the sense of the Tripartite Pact concluded by them on the September 27th, 1940. Article IV: This Agreement comes into force immediately after signature and remains in force as long as the Tri-Partite Pact of September 27th, 1940. The Signatory Powers will confer in time before this period ends about the future form of the co-operation provided for in Article III of this Agreement.” Deputies, Members of the German Reichstag: Ever since my last peace proposal of July 1940 was rejected, we have realized that this struggle has to be fought out to its last implications. That the Anglo-Saxon-Jewish-Capitalist World finds itself now in one and the same Front with Bolshevism does not surprise us National Socialists: we have always found them in company. We have concluded the struggle successfully inside Germany and have destroyed our adversaries after 16 years of struggle for power. When, 23 years ago, I decided to enter political life and to lift this nation out of its decline, I was a nameless, unknown soldier. Many among you know how difficult were the first few years of this struggle. From the time when the Movement consisted of seven men, until we took power in January 1933, the path was so miraculous that only Providence itself with its blessing could have made this possible. Today I am at the head of the strongest Army in the world, the most gigantic Air Force and of a proud Navy. Behind and around me stands the Party with which I became great and which has become great through me. The enemies I see before me are the same enemies as 20 years ago, but the path along which I look forward cannot be compared with that on which I look back. The German people recognizes the decisive hour of its existence, millions of soldiers do their duty, millions of German peasants and workers, women and girls, produce bread for the home country and arms

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for the Front. We are allied with strong peoples, who in the same need are faced with the same enemies. The American President and his Plutocratic clique have mocked us as the Have-nots – that is true, but the Have-nots will see to it that they are not robbed of the little they have. You, my fellow party members, know my unalterable determination to carry a fight once begun to its successful conclusion. You know my determination in such a struggle to be deterred by nothing, to break every resistance which must be broken. In September of 1939, I assured you that neither force nor arms nor time would overcome Germany. I will assure my enemies that neither force of arms nor time nor any internal doubts, can make us waver in the performance of our duty. When we think of the sacrifices of our soldiers, any sacrifice made by the Home Front is completely unimportant. When we think of those who in past centuries have fallen for the Reich, then we realize the greatness of our duty. But anybody who tries to evade this duty has no claim to be regarded in our midst as a fellow German. Just as we were unmercifully hard in our struggle for power we shall be unmercifully hard in the struggle to maintain our nation. At a time when thousands of our best men are dying, nobody must expect to live who tries to depreciate the sacrifices made at the Front. Immaterial under what camouflage he does so, anyone who tries to disturb this German Front, to undermine the resistance of our people, to weaken the authority of the regime, to sabotage the achievements of the Home Front – shall die for it! But with the difference that this sacrifice brings the highest honor to the soldier at the Front, whereas the other dies dishonored and disgraced. Our enemies must not deceive themselves – in the 2,000 years of German history known to us, our people have never been more united than today. The Lord of the Universe has treated us so well in the past years that we bow in gratitude to a providence which has allowed us to be members of such a great nation. We thank Him that we also can be entered with honor into the everlasting book of German history!

7.  Mao Tse-Tung, “A Great Leap Forward” (excerpts) (May 17, 1958) 11 Mao Tse-Tung (1893–1976), the founding father of the Chinese Communist Party, in the following speech at the 8th National Congress in Beijing, introduced his program for a series of social and economic reforms aimed at transforming China from an agrarian society to a communist one. “The Great Leap Forward” would shortly cause the Great Famine, the deadliest man-made disaster in human history. It cost the lives of somewhere between 15 and 55 million people. In this speech, Mao dismisses the rumors that his policies have led to the starvation of peasants. Note the way Mao uses considerations of the distant past and future to reshape his audience’s attitude toward their present suffering. The following excerpt begins in the midst of Mao’s discussion of the domestic situation in China. 11

Source: ed. and trans. the Maoist Documentation Project, available at Marxists Internet Archive, www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-8/mswv8_10.htm.

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[…] Let us discuss the domestic problem. The working class’s alliance with the peasants remains the domestic problem. China’s revolution has always been the issue of this alliance. Without it, the working class could not have gained liberation; it would not be able to build a powerful nation. Prior to the liberation, China’s working class numbered only four million (excluding craftwork). Now there are 12 million, or three times as many. When we include the family members, the number is still only around 40 million, while the peasant population reaches over 500 million. Therefore, China’s problem has always been the problem of the peasant alliance. Some comrades are not very clear about this, not even after having worked in the rural village for decades. Why did we make anti-adventurist mistakes in 1956? The major cause rested with the problem of the peasant alliance. The thinking and feelings of the peasants were not thoroughly understood; therefore, the moment there was a storm, vacillation could easily occur. In 1956 we published a book on the rural socialist high tide, including material from 190 cooperatives in the provinces and regions: Each province contributed several articles except Tibet. In fact, we did not need that many. Just the material of the Wang Kuo-fan Cooperative, Tsun-hua County, Hopeh Province, would have been enough. Then, there was the case of a poor cooperative in central Hopeh. All the middle peasants fled, leaving only three poor peasant households, but these three families held on. They pointed out the direction of the 500 million peasants. Each and every province had many cooperatives with production increases. The increases ranged from one to several-fold. Do you still refuse to believe it? The 40 articles of agriculture will definitely be realized. Can you still refuse to believe it? I feel that they can be realized. In 1955, 1956 and the first half of 1957, the number of disbelievers was considerable, and there were many tide-watchers in all levels, including the Central. At present, some are talking about settling accounts after the fall. They look only for the negative elements, not the positive. When a few cadres are overheard saying that the rural village is not so good, three or four individuals would whisper into one another’s ears that the cooperative is not so good, the future looks bleak, the peasants do not have enough to eat, there is no output increase nor reserve grain, etc. When the family writes for money, they will always exaggerate, making life sound harder than it is and complaining about the lack of grain, oil and fabric, for otherwise you will not remit. You must analyze all these. Is it true that there is no grain, oil, or fabric? Comrade K’o Ch’ing-shih told me about the statistics of Kiangsu Province. In 1955, 30 percent of the cadres of the county, district and township levels made loud protests, complained about the “hardships” on behalf of the peasants and objected to the excessive “control” in the “unified” purchasing and selling. What kind of people were those cadres? They were all well-to-do middle peasants, or formerly poor and lower-middle peasants who had become well-to-do middle peasants. The so-called hardships of the peasants were the hardship of the well-to-do middle peasants. The well-to-do middle peasants wanted to hoard their grain instead of surrendering it and they wanted to promote capitalism. Therefore, they squawked about the hardships of the peasants. The lower levels squawked, but did someone in the regional, provincial, or central level complain also? Was there anyone who was not more or less influenced by his family in the home village? The question is the standpoint you take in looking at a problem. Do you take the standpoint of the working class and poor and lower-middle peasants? Or do you take that of the well-to-do middle peasants? Now it is a little better. The rural areas have made a great leap forward. After the rectification, the anti-rightist movement, cadre participation in labor and worker participation in a part of the management, the urban and rural political atmosphere has changed. One can say that the agricultural “pessimism” and “hopelessness,” and the

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lack of confidence in realizing the “40 articles” have been swept clean. However, some of the “tide watchers” and “fall account settlers” have not been swept clean. Therefore, attention must be given to this work. The report suggested guarding against fancy words without substance, surface without depth and generalization without detail. The suggestion was made by Kiangsu. What they mean is to see one’s own defects. Among the 10 fingers, nine of them are bright and the remaining one in darkness. “Fancy” means flowery, blooming without bearing fruit. In regard to “generalization without detail”, Chang Fei gave attention to the details even though he dealt in generalization. We want to be Chang Fei and give attention to the details. We must not bloom without bearing fruit or give attention to the general while ignoring the details, for otherwise we may not attain our quota in the fall. Comrades of all occupations, professions, and units must pay attention, regardless of their type of work, whether industry, agriculture, commerce, culture and education, or writing novels. The domestic situation is very good and the future looks bright. In the past, thinking was not unified. There was no confidence in achieving greater, faster, better and more economical results. Industry, agriculture and communication are concerned with these results. The basic issue is agriculture, the issue of the 40 articles. Now confidence has increased because of the great leap forward in agricultural production. The agricultural leap forward creates a pressure on industry and causes it to catch up, leaping forward together and motivating the entire work. A proposal was made at the Nan-ning Conference. The provinces should make plans for just how long it would take – five, seven, or however many years – for the value of industrial production to catch up with or surpass that of agricultural production. In only three months after the proposal, industries at the provincial, county, and township levels flourished. Now this is understood by many comrades. In the second half of 1956 some of the Central comrades did not understand it very clearly. After 1956 and the first half of 1957, the problem has been solved. Comrade Chou En-lai’s report at the People’s Congress in June of last year was very good, declaring war on the bourgeoisie with the posture of the proletarian warrior. That article should be read over again. At that time, the problem was truly solved, but profound understanding did not come until later. […] One must respect materialist dialectics. Materialism is the most important. Why? The words “philosophy,” “epistemology” and “methodology” are one and the same. Where does man’s thinking come from? Does it come with one’s birth, or after observation and practice? Man’s thinking is not endowed by nature, but consists of concepts formed through the reflection of external matters. Deductions and judgments only become possible after the preliminary formation of concepts, such as dog, man, child, tree, horse, rock, etc. If a three-year old child is asked whether his mother is a human being or a dog, he will be able to reply that she is a human being, not a dog. This is the judgment of the child. Mother is an individual, while human being is general, yet there is an identity between the two. It is the unity of opposites between the individual and the general. It is dialectics. Thus, a three-year old child understands the unity of contradictions and dialectics. Our thinking can only be formed through the stimulation of our senses by the objective world. It is formed from objective practice. Where do concepts come from? They come from the objective world. The current concept of greater, faster, better and more economical results has been formed only through the accumulation of many experiences, including those of China, of the Soviet Union, of our base and of several years of construction. The phrase “go all out and strive for the upper reaches” is also indispensable. We cannot do without it. Without energy, or sufficient energy,

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it is hard for an individual, a group of people, or a party, to do anything successfully. Naturally we want to strive for the upstream, all the way up to Szechuan, not the lower stream, which is Kiangsu. This is illustrating the issue with natural geography. We must keep pace with the advanced. Our comrades must associate with the masses, truly understand their feelings, and impress our mind with their thinking and emotions. If our mind is not deeply impressed with the feelings of the masses, it becomes easy to waver. If our mind is thus deeply impressed, even if we should run into problems in our work, we will be able to handle them. In the past we often encountered difficulties in battles. Sometimes we couldn’t find a solution even by midnight. But, after sleeping over it, we would have the solution the next day. Difficulties appear constantly. Sun Yat-sen said that he accumulated 40 years of experience. We have accumulated decades of experience. We well know that, whenever we encounter a difficult problem, we can solve it by consulting with the masses, sleeping over it and holding a meeting. Currently, do we not have problems, or difficulties? Do not be frightened by temporary darkness. We constantly have two elements: Light and dark. Now the northern part of Hopeh has no rainfall. Do you think the comrades of Hopeh are not worried? They produced four billion catties last year and are planning for eight billion this year.12 Even if there should be drought, the output will be increased to five or six billion catties. The domestic situation is pretty good. Do not be afraid of any darkness. There are two sides: light and dark. The comrades who made mistakes understood the matter in June of last year. There are still many “tide watchers” and “fall account settlers,” but it doesn’t matter. Let us explain the reasons more frequently and convince them by persuasion. Let us set forth the domestic situation and carry out an education. Let us discuss the elimination of the four pests. Is it good to eliminate the four pests? I find it very interesting. According to Reference News, the Indians are also interested, and they also wish to eliminate pests. They have the pest of monkeys which eat up a lot of grain. No one dares to touch them because they are considered sacred. We do not propose the slogans “cadres decide everything” or “technology decides everything,” or the slogan “communism is the Soviet Union plus electrification.” But does it mean we do not want electrification? We want electrification just the same and even more urgently. The first two slogans were Stalin’s way and rather onesided. If “technology decides everything,” then what about politics? If “cadres decide everything”, then what about the masses? Dialectics is missing here. Stalin sometimes understood dialectics and sometimes not. I mentioned this at the Moscow Conference. Our slogan is: A little more, a little faster, a little better and a little more economical. I think our slogan is a little more intelligent. We should be more intelligent because the pupil should be better than the teacher. Green comes from blue, but it excels blue. The latecomer should be on top. I feel our communism may arrive ahead of schedule. There must be tenseness and relaxation when we do something. To be constantly tense is not good. One must be both tense and relaxed. Excessive exhaustion is no good. Honan is extensively promoting red and expert schools. It is very good, but everyone is too tired. Some people dozed off in class. The teachers are also too tired, but they dared not doze off. Excessive exhaustion is not good. There must be a few days of rest. We must be both tense and relaxed, with both democracy and centralization. This principle applies everywhere. […] 12

A catty is a standard Chinese unit roughly equal to a pound.

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Dialectics should develop in China. We are not concerned about other places; we are concerned about China. What we do is more compatible with dialectics and with Lenin, but not very compatible with Stalin. Stalin said that the socialist society’s production-relations completely conformed to the development of the production force; he negated contradictions. Before his death, he wrote an article to negate himself. He stated that complete conformity did not indicate the absence of contradictions and that improper handling could develop into antagonistic contradictions. One couldn’t say that he lacked dialectics. He had some. While there were superstition and one-sidedness, his method did succeed in building socialism, defeating the enemy, producing 50 million tons of steel, possibly 55 million tons this year and in putting three satellites in orbit. His was one kind of method. Can we find another method? The purpose is to promote socialism and Marxism-Leninism. Take the class struggle as an example. We have adopted Lenin’s method, not Stalin’s. When discussing the socialist economy, Stalin said the post-revolutionary reform was a peaceful reform proceeding from the top to the bottom levels. He did not undertake the class struggle from the bottom to the top, but introduced peaceful land reform in Eastern Europe and North Korea, without struggling against the landowners or the rightists, only proceeding from the top to the bottom and struggling against the capitalists. We proceed from the top to the bottom, but we also add the class struggle from the bottom to the top, settling the roots and linking together. We struggled against the bourgeoisie in the “five-evils movement.” Now we are promoting construction and the mass movement. We require some things from the top to the bottom, such as government directives and orders, regulations and systems, but the masses must undertake a large number of things. We are opposed to favoritism and peaceful land reform. We call the method of Eastern Europe and North Korea favoritism. Peaceful land reform, without class struggle and without struggling against the landowners and capitalists, is of the wrong line and will produce harmful results. Why is the speed of our construction faster than the Soviet Union? Because our conditions are different. We have 600 million people. We follow the road traveled by the Soviet Union; we have its technical aid. Therefore, we should develop faster than the Soviet Union. We expand the tradition of the October Revolution and the mass line of Lenin and rely on the masses, on the poor peasants in the rural areas, except that Lenin did not say this. Yesterday a comrade said that one couldn’t go wrong if one followed a certain individual. By “a certain individual,” he meant me. This statement needs modification. One should follow and yet not follow. An individual is sometimes right and sometimes wrong. Follow him when he is right and do not follow him when he is wrong. One must not follow without discrimination. We follow Marx and Lenin and we follow Stalin in some places. We follow whoever has the truth in his hands. Even if he should be a manure carrier or street sweeper, as long as he has the truth, he should be followed. Our development of cooperatives is for the poor and lower-middle class peasants. We advocate the concept of greater, faster, better and more economical results because it came from the masses. We look for the advanced and the good among the plants, rural villages, stores, schools, troops. Wherever truth is, we follow. Do not follow any particular individual. It is dangerous to follow an individual without discrimination. One must have independent thinking. Our comrades are often not clear about the principle of the 10 fingers. The moment there is trouble, they forget that there are 10 fingers. The internal contradictions among

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the laboring people and the mistakes made by them are always the issue of the nine fingers and the one finger. Our comrades who have committed mistakes are also like them. […] What I am talking about now are those who waver in times of mighty storms. With them it is the question of nine fingers and one finger. Now it is clear. They are different from those with nine or 10 blackened fingers. We must rally and protect them. We must firmly protect the positive elements of all levels. They might have made mistakes, but they are positive. They are afraid of expressing themselves freely and being unable to make a graceful exit. Given firm protection, they will. Their mistakes are only 10 percent. We must firmly protect such cadres in the rectification. The issue of protecting the cadres was discussed in the documents of the Tsingtao Conference. It was discussed even before that. The internal contradictions among the laboring people are generally the relations between the nine fingers and one finger, with individual exceptions. Among the bourgeois middle-of-the-roaders, the problem is five fingers and five fingers (five fingers of capitalism and five of socialism) with the middle-middle, six and four with the middle-left and six to seven blackened fingers with the middle-right. The brains of the bourgeois intellectuals cannot be cleansed all at once, but require several repetitions. The bourgeoisie may still make trouble, not big ones, but possible small ones. Storms may appear in the bourgeoisie. In the face of typhoons of the 12th grade, some of our comrades will waver. With the experience of last year and the tempering undergone by the party, we will be able to ignore the storms and remain steady in our boat. Our boat was not overturned in the mighty storms of last year. Some say that the editorial entitled “Why Is This?” was premature. It was not premature. If postponed, some leftists might have rotted away. Actually, over 100,000 rightists were found among elementary school teachers after December of last year, constituting one-third of the 300,000 rightists in the nation. They dared to launch reckless attacks. Do you mean to say that Chang and Lo would not attack any more after being classified as rightists? They will just the same. As soon as the temperature is suitable, reaching 37 or 38 degrees, those rascals will emerge. Do not forget the issue of the nine fingers and one finger. The anti-adventurist case of 1956 was a result of forgetting this issue and failing to look at problems concretely. This lesson must be learned. Preparation for the Final Disaster I now wish to discuss the gloomy side of things. We must prepare for major disasters. With thousands of miles of bare earth, great droughts and great floods are possible. We must also prepare for major wars. What should we do if the war maniacs drop atom bombs? Let them drop the atom bomb! The possibility is there as long as the warmongers exist. We must also prepare for troubles in the party – splits. There will be no splits if we handle it right, but it is limited to certain situations, and one cannot say that splits are impossible. Was there not a split in the Soviet Union? Between war and peace, the possibility of peace is greater. Currently the possibility of peace is greater than in the past. The strength of the socialist camp is greater than in the past and the possibility of peace is greater than at the time of World War II. The Soviet Union is powerful, and the national independence movement is our strong ally. The Western nations are not stable. The working class, a part of the bourgeoisie, and the American people do not want war; therefore, the possibility of peace is greater than that of war. Nevertheless, there is also the possibility of war. There are the maniacs, and imperialism wants to extricate itself from economic crises. The duration of atomic warfare today will be short, three instead of four years. We must be prepared. What should

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be done if war really comes? I want to discuss this problem. If there is war, we will fight. Let imperialism be swept clean and we will start construction again. Thereafter there will not be any more world war. Since a world war is possible, we must prepare for it. We must not spend our time napping. Do not be alarmed either if there should be war. It would merely mean getting people killed, and we’ve seen people killed in war. Eliminating half of the population occurred several times in China’s history. The 50 million population in the time of Emperor Wu in the Han Dynasty was reduced to 10 million by the time of the Three Kingdoms, the two Chin Dynasties and the North and South Dynasties. The war lasted for decades and intermittently for several hundred years, from the Three Kingdoms to the North and South Dynasties. The T’ang Dynasty began with a population of 20 million and did not reach 50 million until Emperor Hsuan. And Lu-shan staged a revolt and the country was divided into many states. It was not reunited until the Sung Dynasty, some 100 or 200 years later, with a population of just over 10 million. I once discussed this with someone, and I maintained that modern weapons were not as powerful as the big sword of China’s Kuan Yun-Ch’ang, but he did not agree with me. Not very many people were killed in the two World Wars, 10 million in the first and 20 million in the second, but we had 40 million killed in one war. So, how destructive were the big swords! We have no experience in atomic war. So, how many will be killed cannot be known. The best outcome may be that only half of the population is left and the second best may be only one-third. When 900 million are left out of 2.9 billion, several five-year plans can be developed for the total elimination of capitalism and for permanent peace. It is not a bad thing. If the party should split, there would be chaos for a time. If there are people who do not consider the overall situation, like Kao Kang, the party will split and imbalance will appear, though balance will return finally. When imbalances move in opposite directions, the result is balance. It is even more important for the members of the Central Committee to consider the overall situation. Whoever fails to do so will fall. […] Did those disregarding the overall situation and clamoring for splits have a good ending? Chang Kuo-t’ao clamored for splits, but what did he get out of it? Clamoring for and promoting splits are wrong. Only one kind of split is permissible: During the Second International, Germany’s Social Democratic Party voted for the imperialist war and Lenin broke with them. We must make legitimate struggles and fight for the majority. We must not promote splits and ignore the over-all situation. We wish to activate the strength of the 600 million people. We want to work on even the rightists, assimilate them and get seven out of 10 to reform. After their reform is completed in eight or 10 years, they will take our side. After their rightist cap is taken off, if they promote rightism again, they will be made to wear it again.

8.  Deng Xiaoping, Address to the Martial Units – Tiananmen Square (June 9, 1989) 13 Deng Xiaoping (1904–97), who oversaw massive economic reforms as the leader of the People’s Republic of China (1978–89), gave the following 13

Source: “Deng’s June 9 Speech: ‘We Faced a Rebellious Clique’ and ‘Dregs of Society’.” Originally published in New York Times, June 30, 1989. Translated by the New China News Agency.

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address to his generals a few days after they had crushed the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Led by students demanding political reforms, the protests would be immortalized in the photo of the unknown man who stood facing a line of government tanks. This would be Deng’s only public reference to the events, which led to the death of at least hundreds, but possibly thousands, of civilians. You comrades have been working hard. First of all, I’d like to express my heartfelt condolences to the comrades in the People’s Liberation Army, the armed police and police who died in the struggle – and my sincere sympathy and solicitude to the comrades in the army, the armed police and police who were wounded in the struggle, and I want to extend my sincere regards to all the army, armed police and police personnel who participated in the struggle. I suggest that all of us stand and pay a silent tribute to the martyrs. I’d like to take this opportunity to say a few words. This storm was bound to happen sooner or later. As determined by the international and domestic climate, it was bound to happen and was independent of man’s will. It was just a matter of time and scale. It has turned out in our favor, for we still have a large group of veterans who have experienced many storms and have a thorough understanding of things. They were on the side of taking resolute action to counter the turmoil. Although some comrades may not understand this now, they will understand eventually and will support the decision of the Central Committee. The April 26 editorial of the People’s Daily classified the problem as turmoil. The word was appropriate, but some people objected to the word and tried to amend it. But what has happened shows that this verdict was right. It was also inevitable that the turmoil would develop into a counter-revolutionary rebellion. We still have a group of senior comrades who are alive, we still have the army, and we also have a group of core cadres who took part in the revolution at various times. That is why it was relatively easy for us to handle the present matter. The main difficulty in handling this matter lay in that we had never experienced such a situation before, in which a small minority of bad people mixed with so many young students and onlookers. We did not have a clear picture of the situation, and this prevented us from taking some actions that we should have taken earlier. It would have been difficult for us to understand the nature of the matter had we not had the support of so many senior comrades. Some comrades didn’t understand this point. They thought it was simply a matter of how to treat the masses. Actually, what we faced was not just some ordinary people who were misguided, but also a rebellious clique and a large quantity of the dregs of society. The key point is that they wanted to overthrow our state and the party. Failing to understand this means failing to understand the nature of the matter. I believe that after serious work we can win the support of the great majority of comrades within the party. Overthrow of the Party The nature of the matter became clear soon after it erupted. They had two main slogans: to overthrow the Communist Party and topple the socialist system. Their goal was to establish a bourgeois republic entirely dependent on the West. Of course we accept people’s demands for combatting corruption. We are even ready to listen to some persons

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with ulterior motives when they raise the slogan about fighting corruption. However, such slogans were just a front. Their real aim was to overthrow the Communist Party and topple the socialist system. During the course of quelling the rebellion, many comrades of ours were wounded or even sacrificed their lives. Some of their weapons were also taken from them by the rioters. Why? Because bad people mingled with the good, which made it difficult for us to take the firm measures that were necessary. Handling this matter amounted to a severe political test for our army, and what happened shows that our People’s Liberation Army passed muster. If tanks were used to roll over people, this would have created a confusion between right and wrong among the people nationwide. That is why I have to thank the P.L.A. officers and men for using this approach to handle the rebellion. The P.L.A. losses were great, but this enabled us to win the support of the people and made those who can’t tell right from wrong change their viewpoint. They can see what kind of people the P.L.A. are, whether there was bloodshed at Tiananmen, and who were those that shed blood. Once this question is made clear, we can take the initiative. Although it is very saddening that so many comrades were sacrificed, if the event is analyzed objectively, people cannot but recognize that the P.L.A. are the sons and brothers of the people. This will also help people to understand the measures we used in the course of the struggle. In the future, whenever the P.L.A. faces problems and takes measures, it will gain the support of the people. By the way, I would say that in the future, we must make sure that our weapons are not taken away from us. Passing the Test In a word, this was a test, and we passed. Even though there are not so many veteran comrades in the army and the soldiers are mostly little more than 18, 19 or 20 years of age, they are still true soldiers of the people. Facing danger, they did not forget the people, the teachings of the party and the interests of the country. They kept a resolute stand in the face of death. They fully deserve the saying, “they met death and sacrificed themselves with generosity and without fear.” When I talked about passing muster, I was referring to the fact that the army is still the People’s Army. This army retains the traditions of the old Red Army. What they crossed this time was genuinely a political barrier, a threshold of life and death. This is by no means easy. This shows that the People’s Army is truly a great wall of iron and steel of the party and country. This shows that no matter how heavy the losses we suffer and no matter how generations change, this army of ours is forever an army under the leadership of the party, forever the defender of the country, forever the defender of socialism, forever the defender of the public interest, and they are the most beloved of the people. At the same time, we should never forget how cruel our enemies are. For them we should not have an iota of forgiveness. The outbreak of the rebellion is worth thinking about. It prompts us to calmly think about the past and consider the future. Perhaps this bad thing will enable us to go ahead with reform and the open-door policy at a steadier, better, even a faster pace. Also, it will enable us to more speedily correct our mistakes and better develop our strong points. I cannot elaborate on this today. I just want to raise the subject here.

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Clear Answers Sought The first question is: Are the line, goals and policies laid down by the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee, including our “‘three-step” development strategy, correct? Is it the case that because this riot took place there is some question about the correctness of the line, goals and policies we laid down? Are our goals “leftist?” Should we continue to use them for our struggle in the future? These significant questions should be given clear and definite answers. We have already accomplished our first goal of doubling the gross national product. We plan to use 12 years to attain our second goal of doubling the G.N.P. In the 50 years after that, we hope to reach the level of a moderately developed country. A two-percent annual growth rate is sufficient. This is our strategic goal. I don’t believe that what we have arrived at is a “leftist” judgment. Nor have we set up an overly ambitious goal. So, in answering the first question, I should say that our strategic goal cannot be regarded as a failure. It will be an unbeatable achievement for a country with 1.5 billion people like ours to reach the level of a moderately developed nation after 61 years. China is capable of realizing this goal. It cannot be said that our strategic goal is wrong because of the occurrence of this event. Applying the Principles The second question is this: Is the general conclusion of the 13th Party Congress of “One Center, two basic points” correct? Are the two basic points – upholding the four cardinal principles and persisting in the open policy and reforms – wrong? In recent days I have pondered these two points. No, we haven’t been wrong. There’s nothing wrong with the four cardinal principles. If there is anything amiss, it’s that these principles haven’t been thoroughly implemented – they haven’t been used as the basic concept to educate the people, educate the students and educate all the cadres and party members. The crux of the current incident was basically the confrontation between the four cardinal principles and bourgeois liberalization. It isn’t that we have not talked about such things as the four cardinal principles, worked on political concepts, and opposed bourgeois liberalization and spiritual pollution. What we haven’t done is maintain continuity in these talks – there has been no action and sometimes even hardly any talk. The fault does not lie in the four cardinal principles themselves, but in wavering in upholding these principles, and in the very poor work done to persist in political work and education. In my Chinese people’s political consultative conference talk on New Year’s day 1980, I talked about four guarantees, one of which was the enterprising spirit in hard struggle and plain living. Promoting plain living must be a major objective of education and this should be the keynote for the next 60 to 70 years. The more prosperous our country becomes, the more important it is to keep hold of the enterprising spirit. The promotion of this spirit and plain living will also be helpful for overcoming decay. On Political Education After the people’s republic was founded, we promoted plain living. Later on, when life became a little better, we promoted spending more, leading to waste everywhere. This,

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in addition to lapses in theoretical work and an incomplete legal system, resulted in backsliding. I once told foreigners that our worst omission of the past 10 years was in education. What I meant was political education, and this doesn’t apply to schools and students alone, but to the masses as a whole. And we have not said much about plain living and the enterprising spirit, about what kind of a country China is and how it is going to turn out. This is our biggest omission. Is there anything wrong to the basic concept of reforms and openness? No. Without reforms and openness, how could we have what we have today? There has been a fairly satisfactory rise in the standard of living, and it may be said that we have moved one stage further. The positive results of 10 years of reforms must be properly assessed even though there have emerged such problems as inflation. Naturally, in reform and adopting the open policy, we run the risk of importing evil influences from the West, and we have never underestimated such influences. In the early 1980’s, when we established special economic zones, I told our Guangdong comrades that on the one hand they should persevere with reforms and openness, and on the other hand they should deal severely with economic crimes. Some Inadequacies Looking back, it appears that there were obvious inadequacies – there hasn’t been proper coordination. Being reminded of these inadequacies will help us formulate future policies. Further, we must persist in the coordination between a planned economy and a market economy. There cannot be any change. In the course of implementing this policy we can place more emphasis on planning in the adjustment period. At other times there can be a little more market adjustment so as to allow more flexibility. The future policy should still be a marriage between the planned and market economies. What is important is that we should never change China back into a closed country. Such a policy would be most detrimental. We don’t even have a good flow of information. Nowadays, are we not talking about the importance of information? Certainly, it is important. If one who is involved in management doesn’t possess information, he is no better than a man whose nose is blocked and whose ears and eyes are shut. Again, we should never go back to the old days of trampling the economy to death. I put forward this proposal for the consideration of the Standing Committee. This is also an urgent problem, a problem we’ll have to deal with sooner or later. In brief, this is what we have achieved in the past decade: Generally, our basic proposals, ranging from a developing strategy to policies, including reforms and openness, are correct. If there is any inadequacy, then I should say our reforms and openness have not proceeded adequately enough. The problems we face in implementing reforms are far greater than those we encounter in opening our country. In political reforms we can affirm one point: We have to insist on implementing the system of the National People’s Congress and not the American system of the separation of three powers. The U.S. berates us for suppressing students. But when they handled domestic student unrest and turmoil, didn’t they send out police and troops, arrest people and shed blood? They were suppressing students and the people, but we are putting down counterrevolutionary rebellion. What qualifications do they have to criticize us? From now on, however, we should pay attention to such problems. We should never allow them to spread.

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Element of Persistence What do we do from now on? I would say that we should continue, persist in implementing our planned basic line, direction, and policy. Except where there is a need to alter a word or phrase here and there, there should be no change in the basic line or basic policy. Now that I have raised this question, I would like you all to consider it thoroughly. As to how to implement these policies, such as in the areas of investment, the manipulation of capital, etc., I am in favor of putting the emphasis on capital industry and agriculture. In capital industry, this calls for attention to the supply of raw materials, transportation, and energy – there should be more investment in this area for the next 10 to 20 years, even if it involves heavy debts. In a way, this is also openness. Here, we need to be bold and have made hardly any serious errors. We should work for more electricity, work for more railway lines, public roads, shipping. There’s a lot we can do. As for steel, foreigners judge we’ll need some 120 million tons per year in future. We are now using some 60 million tons, half of what we need. If we were to improve our existing facilities and increase production by 20 million tons, we could reduce the amount of steel we need to import. Obtaining foreign loans to improve this area is also an aspect of reform and openness. This question now confronting us is not whether the policies of opening and reforming are correct or not or whether we should continue with these policies. The question is how to carry out these policies; where do we go and which area should we concentrate on? We have to firmly implement the series of policies formulated since the third plenary session of the 11th central committee. We must conscientiously sum up our experiences, persevere in what is right, correct what is wrong, and do a bit more where we lag behind. In short, we should sum up the experiences of the present and look forward to the future. That’s all I have to say on this occasion.

Index

Acheson, Dean, 123 Achilles, 15, 49 Adams, John, 53–59 Adams, Sherman, 119 Adenauer, Konrad, 295 Adrastus, 46 Aeacus, 73 Aegeus, 45 Aegina, 30 Aeschylus, 68 Aesop, 137 Afghanistan, 206, 208, 302–4 Agis, 312 Ajax, 73 Alabama, 167, 172, 175 Albright, Madeleine, 200, 201 Alcmene, 45, 49 Alexander I of Macedon, 32 Alexander of Troy. See Paris of Troy Alexandria, Virginia, 121 Alsace, 276 Amphipolis, 33 Amphitryon, 49 An Lu-shan, 354 Anaxagoras, 12 Angola, 174, 240 Antonius, Marcus (orator), 20 Antony, Mark, 108–9, 137–38 Aphidna, 45 Aphrodite, 47 Apollodorus of Pergamon, 20 Aquinas, Thomas, 254 Argentina, 298–300

Argos, 32, 33, 50, 70 Aristides, 312 Ariston (Peripatetic), 21 Aristotle, 2, 6–7, 20, 246, 253, 254 Poetics, 144 Politics, 8 Rhetoric, 2–6 Topics, 13 Arizona, 195 Athena, 47 Athenaeus, 21 Athens, 26, 28, 31–40, 105–8, 291, 311, 312 Atlanta, Georgia, 159 Attica, 34, 45, 46 Attila the Hun, 339 Augustus, 309 Aurelius, Marcus, 253 Australia, 303 Austria, 152, 268, 272, 276, 311, 313, 315, 333 Averroes, 254 Babylon, 139 Bacon, Francis, 55 Baldwin, James, 178 Baltimore, Maryland, 121 Balzac, Honoré, 253 Bandung, Indonesia, 173–74 Barcelona, 281 Barnard College, 201, 204, 207 Bavaria, 328 Beamer, Todd, 302 Beecher, Catherine, 186

361

Index

362 Belgium, 266, 272, 279, 295 Belgrade, 291, 338 Bellenger, Frederick, 269 Berchtesgaden, 327 Berlin, 155, 168, 271–73, 286, 291, 294–98, 302, 327, 328, 338, 347 Bernstein, Richard, 246 Bevin, Ernest, 290 Bin Laden, Osama, 302, 303 Birdseye, Clarence, 196 Birmingham, Alabama, 168, 177 Bismarck, Otto von, 326 Black Sea, 340 Blackstone, Sir William, 84 Du Bois, W.E.B., 253 Bok, Derek, 245 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 263, 272, 333–34 Boston, 142 Bourke Cockran, William, 289 Brandenburg Gate (Berlin), 295, 302 Braunau, 328 Britain, 263, 264, 268–82, 286–94, 297–300, 303, 318, 324, 345 Brown University, 247 Brussels, 344 Brutus, Marcus Junius, 108–9, 137–38, 312 Bryan, William Jennings, 112 Bryson of Heraclea, 145 Buchanan, James, 66, 210 Bucharest, 291 Budapest, 201, 291 Buddha, 255 Burke, Edmund, 245 Bush, George W., 231 Cadmea, 46 Cadmus, 50 Caesar, Julius, 63, 93, 108–9, 137–38, 309, 314 Cairo, 303 California, 118, 119, 140, 172, 174, 177, 195 Caligula, 316 Callicles, 11, 22 Cambodia, 207, 240–41 Camp David (Maryland), 224, 227 Campus Martius, 75 Canada, 89, 280, 283, 288, 290, 345 Cape Canaveral, Florida, 283 Caria, 50 Carter, Jimmy, 231 Carthage, 337 Castor, 45

Castro, Fidel, 240 Catiline (Lucius Sergius Catilina), 73–78, 314 Cato the Elder, 20 Central African Republic, 203 Cerberus, 46 Cethegus, Marcus Cornelius, 19 Chamberlain, Neville, 270–77 Chang Fei, 350 Chang Kuo-t’ao, 354 Charlemagne, 217 Chersonesus, 33 Chicago, Illinois, 84, 128, 230, 343 Chilon of Sparta, 116 China, 142, 235, 241, 256–57, 292, 344, 348–59 Chou En-lai, 350 Christ, Jesus, 87, 90, 93, 110, 165, 180 Chrysippus, 22 Churchill, Winston, 268, 286–94, 336, 346 Cicero, 2, 19, 22 Clark, Marsha, 102 Cleage, Albert, 175 Cleanthes, 22 Cleon, 103, 105–8 Clinton, Bill, 231 Clinton, Hillary, 128, 134, 203, 230 Clodius Pulcher, Publius, 314 Coleman, Isobel, 205 Columbia University, 51, 200, 204 Congo, 174 Corax, 2 Corer, Geoffrey, 193 Cornelius Celsus, 21 Coronea, 33 Crete, 46 Crimea, 201 Critolaus of Phaselis, 21 Croatia, 339 Cromwell, Oliver, 309 Cuba, 175, 240, 282–86 Cuomo, Mario, 250 Currier, Stephen, 177 Curtis, Benjamin Robbins, 213 Cycnus, 49 Czechoslovakia, 269–70, 272, 275–77, 291 Danae, 49 Danaus, 50 Dante Alighieri, 251 Darden, Christopher, 102 Darrow, Clarence, 91–92 Darwin, Charles, 89, 90

Index Daschle, Tom, 302 Demeter, 45 Demosthenes, 2, 312 Deng Xiao Ping, 257 Denmark, 276, 345 Denmig, Gunther, 204 Detroit, Michigan, 174, 177, 178, 234 Dickens, Charles, 200 Dionysus, 145 Douglas, Stephen, 211, 213–14 Douglass, Frederick, 100, 101 Dreyfus, Alfred, 80–83, 322 Duke University, 246 Dumas, Alexandre, 253 Dunkirk, 279, 281 Durant, Will, 254 Durban, South Africa, 96 Eckart, Dietrich, 327 Eden, Anthony, 346 Edison, Thomas, 196 Egypt, 50, 203, 207, 303, 304 Eisenhower, Dwight, 117, 120, 123–24 El Salvador, 303 Elatea, 33 Engels, Friedrich, 193, 320 England, 57–58, 155, 175, 185, 189, 251, 258–59, 262, 313, 315, 321, 334, 337, 338, 341, 345, 347 Ennius, 19 Eos, 49 Epidamnus, 27, 29 Erhard, Ludwig, 295 Erytheia, 46 Ethiopia, 142 Etruria, 74 Euboea, 33 Euripides, 2, 144 Eurystheus, 45 Fanon, Frantz, 257 Farghadani, Atena, 206–8 Farmer, James Leonard, 177–78 Farrell, William T., 199 Faulkner, William, 131 Ferraro, Geraldine, 131 Finland, 339 Fish, Stanley, 246, 252 Flaccus, Aulus Avilius, 77 Flint, Michigan, 231 La Follette, Robert, 162 Ford, Henry, 196 Fort Leavenworth (Kansas), 129

363 France, 80–83, 174, 217, 223, 239, 258, 262, 263, 268, 270, 279–82, 295, 297, 321, 322, 334, 345 Frémont, John C., 63 French Revolution, 175 Freud, Sigmund, 190 Friedenberg, Edward Z., 255 Froissart, Jean, 223 Fuhrman, Mark, 101 Gaius Manlius, 75, 77, 78 Gaius Sulpicius Gallus, 20 Gamaliel, 215 Gandhi, Mahatma, 98 Garrison, William Lloyd, 142 Geneva, 296 Georgia, 171–72, 174, 176 Gephardt, Dick, 302 Germany, 175, 204, 262, 268–76, 279–82, 291–93, 321, 323–30, 334–48, 354 Gibraltar, Strait of, 280 Giuliani, Rudolph, 306 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 296, 297 Gore, Al, 230 Gorgias, 2, 3, 11, 19–22, 43 Gracchi brothers, 77 Grant, Ulysses S., 67 Greece, 27, 28, 31, 32, 291, 310, 324, 337–38 Gromyko, Andrei, 284 Guam, 261 Guangdong, 358 Guinea, 174, 204 Hades, 45, 47, 73 Haiti, 64 Hamilton, Alexander, 51–53 Hancock, John, 57 Harlan, John Marshall, 170 Harrison, Frederick, 185 Harvard University, 234, 244–45 Hastert, Dennis, 302 Heckler, Margaret, 197 Heidegger, Martin, 250, 256 Helen of Troy, 40–51 Heliogabalus, 316 Henry V, 258 Henry VIII, 78–80 Hera, 47 Heracles, 45, 46 Hermagoras of Temnos, 20 Hesiod, 73 Hesperides, 46

364 Hiero I of Syracuse, 117 Hirsch, E.D., 244 Hiss, Alger, 122–23 Hitler, Adolf, 155, 175, 241, 256, 262, 268, 269, 272–77, 281, 282, 293, 325–29 Holland. See Netherlands Homer, 50, 73 Hong Kong, 261 Honolulu, Hawaii, 261 Hook, Sidney, 248 Hoover, Herbert, 112 Hotspur (Sir Henry Percy), 217 Howe, Elias, 196 Hunt, Rex, 300 Huxley, Thomas, 89 Hyperides, 20 Iceland, 296 Illinois, 195 India, 205, 235, 351 Indiana, 187 Ionian Sea, 339 Iran, 206–7, 291, 303 Iraq, 305 Ireland, 189 Isocrates, 2, 19, 22 Israel, 130, 235 Italy, 28, 74–76, 78, 163, 270, 292, 295, 339, 346–47 Ito, Lance, 102 Japan, 163, 175, 235, 250, 261–62, 292, 295, 303, 334, 335, 346–47 Jefferson, Thomas, 53–59, 63, 112, 185 Jerusalem, 139 Johannesburg, South Africa, 96 Johnson, Lyndon B., 167, 193 Jordan, 304 Jupiter, 78 Kamenev, Lev, 331, 335 Kansas, 129, 211 Kansas City, Missouri, 229 Kant, Immanuel, 251, 254 Kao Kang, 354 Kennan, George, 240 Kennedy, Jacqueline, 198 Kennedy, John F., 177, 226, 282–86, 294, 296 Kennedy, Robert F., 226 Kenya, 129, 174, 303 Kerkyon, 46 Khayyam, Omar, 85, 87 Khomeini, Ruhollah (Ayatollah), 251

Index Khrushchev, Nikita, 175, 285, 295 Kiangsu, 351 King Jr., Martin Luther, 67–68, 135, 177–78, 226 Kirov, Sergei, 331–32 K’o Ch’ing-shih, 349 Korea, 122–23, 175, 250, See also South Korea Kosovo, 305 Kuan Yun-Ch’ang, 354 Lacedaemonia. See Sparta Lancaster, Burt, 178 Lapiths, 46 Leda, 40, 45, 49 Lehmann, Christopher, 247 Lenin, Vladimir, 351–52, 354 Leopold, Nathan, 91 Lewinsky, Monica, 229, 231 Liberia, 204 Libya, 154 Liebknecht, Karl, 320–21 Lincke, Paul, 294 Lincoln, Abraham, 59–67, 112, 122, 168, 170, 221 Lloyd George, David, 292 Locke, John, 251, 257 Loeb, Richard, 84, 92 London, 89, 142, 272, 299, 344 Los Angeles, California, 119 Lott, Trent, 302 Louis XIV, 272 Louisiana, 109, 155, 172, 195, 263 Lowell, James Russell, 102 Luxemburg, Rosa, 323 Lycurgus, 312 Lyon, Mary, 186 Lysias, 22 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 247, 255, 309 Malay Peninsula, 261 de Man, Paul, 256 Manius Aquillius, 20 Mao Zedong, 175 Marshall, George, 295 Marx, Karl, 242, 254, 320–21, 325, 352 Mary, St., 195 Massachusetts, 187 Maximilian I of Mexico, 263 May, Rollo, 189 McCain, John, 134 McLean, John, 213 Mead, Margaret, 190, 193

Index Megara, 30 Méline, Jules, 80 Melissus of Samos, 43 Memnon, 49 Memphis, Tennessee, 68 Menelaus, 49, 50 Menendez, Mario Benjamín, 298–99 Messenia, 32–33 Mexico, 163, 263, 303 Mexico City, 283 Meyer, Annie N., 200 Midway Island, 261 Mill, John Stuart, 251 Miltiades, 312 Milton, John, 246, 251 Minos, 73 Mississippi, 171–72, 175, 203, 225 Mississippi River, 66 Missouri, 210, 213 Mitchell, Stephen A., 122 Molotov, Vyacheslav, 338 Montgomery, Alabama, 164–67 Moore, Jeremy, 298–300 Moscow, 240, 291, 296, 337 Moses, 110, 130, 195 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 201 Munich, 268, 269, 273, 275, 327–28 Musaeus, 73 Mussolini, Benito, 270, 273, 280, 344 Myrdal, Gunnar, 190 Mytilene, 105–8 Naboth, 275 Nasser, Abdel, 98 Nebraska, 187, 234 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 98 Nelson, Samuel, 213 Nemesis, 49 Netherlands, 266, 278 New Hampshire, 172 New Orleans, Louisiana, 115 New York, 171, 172, 174, 187, 203, 306 New York City, 177, 191, 301 Newton, Isaac, 55 Nicaragua, 246 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 91, 247, 251, 253, 255, 327 Nixon, Pat, 119–21, 124, 190 Nixon, Richard, 190, 193, 197 Nkrumah, Kwame, 98 North Carolina, University of, 246, 252 Norway, 264, 266, 278 Nuremberg, 273, 327, 329

365 O’Brien, Conor Cruise, 247 Oahu, Hawaii, 261 Obama, Barack, 201, 202, 231 Obama, Michelle, 201, 232 Odysseus, 73 Onassis, Aristotle, 198 Orchomenus, 33 Oropus, 33 Orpheus, 73 Orwell, George, 246 Palamedes, 73 Palatine Hill, 74 Panama Canal, 283 Paris, France, 81, 178, 214, 302, 320–21, 325, 344 Paris, Texas, 203 Paris of Troy, 42, 47–49 Parks, Rosa, 164–65 Pascal, Blaise, 248 Pasiphae, 46 Pataki, George, 306 Patrocles, 20 Patroclus, 15 Patton, George S., 129 Paul, St., 80 Peloponnesus, 28, 30, 33, 34, 46, 50 Pelops, 50 Pennsylvania, 172, 187, 225, 301, 306 Percy, Walker, 248 Perithous, 45 Persia, 30, 32, 72, 338, See also Iran Peru, 283 Peter, St., 80 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 51, 115, 128, 135 Philip II of Macedon, 31–34, 312 Philip II of Spain, 272 Philippines, 261, 297 Phocis, 32–34 Phryne, 20 Piatakov, Georgy, 335 Pilate, Pontius, 93 Piso, Gaius Calpurnius, 314 Plataea, 33 Plato, 2, 4–6, 112, 127, 245, 249, 254, 255 Apology of Socrates, 22 Gorgias, 3, 6, 19–22 Menexenus, 22 Phaedrus, 22 Republic, 5, 252 Poland, 268, 291, 340–41 Polus, 11, 12, 22 Polydeuces, 45

Index

366 Port Elizabeth, South Africa, 96 Portugal, 290 Poseidon, 45–46, 49 Potidaea, 33 Potocki, Józef Alfred, 341, 343 Powell, Adam Clayton Jr., 177 Powers, Samantha, 207 Praeneste, 75 Prague, 201, 291 Priam, 47 Protagoras, 5, 43 Prussia, 315, 341 Quintilian, 2 Radek, Karl, 335 Randolph, A. Philip, 177–78 Rawls, John, 245 Reagan, Ronald, 133, 294–98 Reeves, Richard, 247 Reichstag, 298, 328, 338, 345 Reuter, Ernst, 295 Reuther, Walter, 178 Reynaud, Paul, 345 Rhadamanthus, 73 Rich, Richard, 78–80 Ridge, Tom, 305 Riefenstahl, Leni, 329 Roberts, John, 231 Roland, 217 Rome, 63, 73–78, 80, 93, 108–9, 137–38, 254, 310, 314, 337–38 Romulus, 78 Roncesvalles (Navarre, Spain), 217 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 109, 112, 115, 244, 342–48 Roosevelt, Theodore, 112, 159 Rorty, Richard, 256 Rosovsky, Henry, 250 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 247 Rushdie, Salman, 251 Russia, 174, 175, 201, 235, 291–93, 315, 319, 323, 324, 333, 337, See also Soviet Union Said, Edward, 252 Samos, 30, 137 San Francisco, California, 261 Sarpedon, 49 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 246, 257 Saturninus, Lucius Appuleius, 77 Saudi Arabia, 229, 304 Schlesinger Jr., Arthur, 247–48

Sciron, 46 Scythia, 35 Seale, Bobby, 193 Selma, Alabama, 204 Seoul, 303 Serbia, 272 Servius Sulpicius Galba, 20 Shackleton, Lord Edward, 300 Shafarevich, Igor, 239 Shakespeare, William, 90, 246, 251, 253 Sharpeville, South Africa, 95 Sherman, William Tecumseh, 67 Sicily, 28, 154 Sierra Leone, 204 Simonides, 117 Simpson, OJ, 100–2, 134 Sison, Michele, 205 Sisyphus, 73 Skidelsky, Robert, 247 Socrates, 3–6, 11, 20–22, 35, 71–73, 112, 136, 247–48, 254, 255 Sofia, Bulgaria, 291 Sokolnikov, Grigory, 335 Somalia, 207 South Africa, 94–100, 207 South Carolina, 129, 135, 172, 203 South Korea, 297, 303, See also Korea Soviet Union, 235, 240–41, 282–86, 294–98, 333, 338–40, 346, 350–53, See also Russia Spain, 163, 276, 311, 338, 339 Sparkman, John, 122 Sparta, 27–28, 30, 33, 35, 37, 45, 47, 50, 311, 312 Stalin, Joseph, 291, 338, 351–52 Stanford University, 247, 250, 252, 253, 255, 257 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 180 Steinem, Gloria, 198 Stephen, St., 80 Stesichorus, 50 Stevenson, Adlai, 122–23, 201 Sulkowicz, Emma, 204, 206, 207 Sun Yat-sen, 351 Swift, Jonathan, 251 Switzerland, 276, 300, 311, 323 Syracuse, 2 Syria, 203 Szechuan, 351 Tacitus, 309 Taft, William, 159, 185 Taney, Roger, 212

Index Tantalus, 50 Tanzania, 303 Telamon, 73 Tennessee, 88–93, 172 Texas, 122, 195 Thebes, 32–33, 46, 50 Theodectes, 20 Theodorus of Gadara, 21 Therapnae, 50 Thermopylae, 32–34 Theseus, 45–47 Thespiae, 33 Thessaly, 33 Thetis, 49 Thrasymachus, 2, 5 Tiananmen Square, 256, 355 Tiberius, 309 Tibet, 349 Tisias, 2 Tito, Josip Broz, 292 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 245, 255 Tojo, Hideki, 175 Tokyo, 155 Transkei (South Africa), 94 Triptolemus, 73 Troy, 41, 49, 50, 73 Truman, Harry, 123, 287 Trumbull, Lyman, 210 Tunisia, 154–55 Turkey, 291 Tyndareus, 41, 45 Uganda, 207 Ukraine, 201, 203 USSR. See Soviet Union Uzbekistan, 303 Vassar College, 188 Vespasian, 309 Vienna, 291, 327

367 Vietnam, 168, 193, 197, 224, 240 Virginia, 140, 213, 306 Wake Island, 261 Warsaw, 291, 341 Washington, DC, 60–61, 64, 109, 115, 117, 118, 121, 123–24, 133, 177, 224, 226, 232, 283, 301, 341, 343 Washington, George, 51–52, 58, 59, 145, 151 Webster, Daniel, 112 Weimar Republic, 256 Weizsacker, Richard von, 295 West Point (US Military Academy), 125, 127 Westminster College, 287 Weygand, Maxime, 279, 282 White, William Howard, 230, 231 Whittier, California, 120, 121 Whittier, John Greenleaf, 161 Wilkins, Roy, 177–78 Willard, Emily, 186 Wilson, Horace, 273 Wilson, Woodrow, 342, 346 Woolf, Virginia, 190 Wright, Jeremiah, 128–34 Wu (Han Dynasty Emperor), 354 Xenophon, 255 Yale University, 244 Yalta, 292 Yemen, 207 Young, Whitney, 177–78 Yousufi, Malika, 206 Yugoslavia, 163, 338 Zeno, 43 Zeus, 40, 45, 47–49 Zinoviev, Grigory, 331, 335 Zion, 139