Convocation Remarks, 2000
September 1, 2000
"Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.""
So spoke President John F. Kennedy in his inaugural address on January 20, 1961.
Those were eloquent words, inspiring words. I know. I heard them. When they were spoken forty years ago, they touched profoundly the heart of a young America of which I was a part and they kindled a blazing confidence in our own and our country’s future.
Who could know then, that in less than three years, much of that dream would die drenched in the blood of our nation’s young President, dying with him in the streets of Dallas, leaving all of us alive then and living now with the enduring memory of a man who asked for our best during a time when America seemed undefiled, and the realization of its promise almost within our grasp.
There were tears, rivers of tears. Yet, despite that, we continued to believe in the dream. We still heard and heeded the echo of his compelling words. Did he not speak for all of us when he said that "we will pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." So we thought. So did he. He was wrong. So were we.
The war in Vietnam came soon enough. Soon enough we would know how high a price, how heavy a burden how many hardships we would accept to assure the survival and the success of liberty. We began with the confidence, some might say the arrogance, of a country that "had never lost a war" and, as we naively thought, never would. It all ended with vivid images of helicopters evacuating the American Embassy in Saigon, leaving behind thousands of Vietnamese who had staked their fate, indeed their lives on the integrity of our promises. Between that beginning and that end, there was much dying, much treasure lost, much faith betrayed. And what of those Americans who died? They were mostly the young, the uneducated "the sons of Pullman porters and the sons of engineers" those who lacked the political connection or financial resources of their better educated and richer brethren, most of whom found easy escape routes from the risk of service.
Then, too, there was the bitter war against the war waged in American streets and on American campuses by those who believed that in Vietnam, something horrible had happened to their country. Largely motivated by honorable intentions, they sometimes confused opposition to a war they thought wrong, with contempt for a country in which much still remained right.
I know what many of you must now be thinking why this fragment of his generational biography? It may all be vitally alive to him. It is ancient history to us. Fair question, but let me explain. My purpose is not to return us to the 60's, very much in fashion these days, but to recall a time a time not so very long ago when the young were not cynical about politics, when thoughts about American government summoned images of the greatest generation’s great crusade in the cause of freedom, not the sordid and silly battles for advantage waged with ridiculous seriousness, and with some remarkable exceptions, by that comical troop of political pygmies now resident in Washington.
I summon that good memory of an earlier time because I believe that its reality is worth striving to recover. A great nation must somehow and sometimes be uplifted by great dreams that can find expression only in government endeavor. A just nation cannot depend exclusively upon government to assure justice and fair opportunity but neither of those great goods can be attained without government commitment. Finally, I think that at its best, the reality of a government democratically chosen and wisely led is the supreme expression of healthy community without which this nation and its citizens cannot thrive and may not survive.
If you ask for examples consider these: Social Security, the GI Bill, the Interstate Highway system, Medicare and the whole range of environmental initiatives that have protected and restored in so many places healthy air and clean water. Indeed, you may think about this College founded by government charter and today substantially funded by public dollars.
President Roosevelt was right. "Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity, than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference."
A later president, Ronald Reagan, a life long admirer of Franklin Roosevelt, countered that "Government is not the solution. Government is the problem." President Reagan was partly right but only partly. He won election by articulating a clear and convincing vision of an America defined by freedom, by a new prosperity built upon the power of individual initiative, by a world liberated from the dead weight of Communism. At its core, President Reagan’s argument was for a program that limited state provision in favor of individual responsibility. He believed, as I do that, free markets, free choice and free people will find happiness and prosperity in ways and in places that others cannot.
President Reagan, like most triumphant political leaders, was lucky as well as good. His message of limited government and individual freedom fit well the mood of a nation bruised by the memories of Vietnam and wounded by the revelations of Watergate. Little in the 20 years between 1960 and 1980, justified great faith in government. The generation that listened with inspired attention to John Kennedy’s summons to national greatness through shared sacrifice had become a generation that held government and politics in some contempt and wished above all else to be left alone to cultivate its private gardens.
Certainly there is no denying that today we prosper as never before. In this presidential election year, both parties scramble to claim credit. Isn’t it odd how rarely either Al Gore or George Bush mention Alan Greenspan? Still, I believe that in important ways Ronald Reagan deserves to be remembered as one of the Founding Fathers. He changed the terms of our national debate and made respectable by results ideas that before him had been distinctly unfashionable.
But just as my generation was perhaps moved too much by John Kennedy’s eloquent summons to battle, the generation that has grown up in President Reagan’s shadow will come to grief along with all the rest of us if we persist in single-minded worship at the altar of the free market and material success. Yes, our technological innovations are the wonder of the world, yes millions are wealthy beyond their wildest dreams and yes, it is a glorious thing to live material dreams beyond our imagining. But along with great wealth has come a dangerous arrogance. Not, as in the case of my generation, an arrogance wrapped in the illusion of American power, but an arrogance which denies consistently a responsibility to others, which seeks a perpetual exemption from the rules that make for a just society, which sees government not as a powerful engine in the service of the common good but as a force to be manipulated for still more special privileges.
I recently finished a book entitled Cyber Selfish. An interesting word that. In it, the author quotes from what she calls the bible for understanding high tech. Let me share a quotation from that 21st century gospel:
"Most Silicon Valley tycoons are not concerned with issues of social inequality or injustice; to the entrepreneur the poor and the weak are poor and weak because they are inferior. It is the poor and the weak’s fault that they are so downtrodden.""
Many of you have begun your William and Mary education this week. Others have returned to continue it. The slate of your generation is virtually clean, only the preamble written. And that is why you are here. Indeed, that is why we are here.
The point of a William and Mary education is simply this: to cultivate in you a capacity for independent and critical thought, to help you work through issues of great complexity and yet to see the ultimate simplicity of profound complexity. You have been taught here to believe that the size of your heart is more important than the balance in your bank account and that consistent service to others is the supreme expression of our common humanity. Use this extraordinary educational opportunity to learn from the failures of my generation and the errors of the one which followed. Understand the wisdom in Harry Truman’s words: "The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know."
None of you, not one, need enlist in the ranks of the looney left or the righteous right. Neither, believe me will take you to places worthy of the talents that make each of you so special. Freedom and an active, constructive government are not incompatible ideas. Indeed, I will argue now, tomorrow and forever that the greatest glory of our constitutional order has been the construction of a framework that has sustained both by valuing each.
Tom Brokaw makes the case that those who bore the burden of WWII were America’s greatest generation. Surely they earned that honor by what they achieved by "opposing any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty." But history is never over, it continues to unfold. I urge you and others of your age to compel history to confirm yours as the greatest generation of America Act II Chapter 2004. This is your time, now is your place, the future, sooner than you know, will become your responsibility.
Do please at least think about this advice. Why should you settle for less? True it is, that much striving and many years lie between this moment and the time when history will gauge and mark your place. But your journey has begun. And commitment must come now.
Some final and also famous words from President Kennedy’s inaugural address. They stir strong memories in the minds of most of my generation and in light of all our history since remembering them brings desolate feelings of hopes betrayed and the impossible sadness of opportunities lost. But none of that need be true for you. "And so my fellow Americans," President Kennedy said, "and so my fellow Americans ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
And so to you the Class of 2004 I would ask you this: Try, will you not, try always to live by the terms of that invitation?
